Prescott
by DevinTowerwood
Summary: In this version of reality, Max Caulfield is not the only chrononaut to appear in Blackwell during the events of Chrysalis. Instead, it is Nathan's regret at Chloe's murder that causes the first rewind, not Max's. This stays relatively close to the canon, although it includes deleted elements of the script as well as some headcanon elements to establish resulting scenes.
1. The Bathroom

"Fuck you."

Nathan just stared, dumbfounded, at the girl in the corner, the flat, snaking beast of fire up her leg nothing in comparison to the look in her eye. She hugged her arms as close to her as she could, as if staying warm would return control to her limbs. But there was nothing she could do - even less that she should be capable of doing. How could she even speak? How could she even track him with her eyes?

But she said it again: "Fuck you."

The man in the suit, his black leather work gloves curled tight around a small syringe, strode into the white portion of the studio, but his approach did not turn her attention, latched as it was to Nathan himself. He couldn't move. He felt like he couldn't even breathe.  
She finally seemed to register the other man when he crouched down beside her, pinning her by the forehead to the wall, and pushing it off to the side to reveal her neck. But for whatever spasms occurred in her hands, they were nothing as powerful as it would take to stop the needle in her neck.  
"Now now, Ms. Amber, try to practice some . . . professional civility."

It was just another dream. As Nathan shot awake, his body slamming back into the driver's seat of his car, he remembered that it was just another dream. He quickly pressed 'off' on his radio, which was playing some stupid modern rock shit, and leaned his forehead against his steering wheel, which was, admittedly, exactly what got him into this position in the first place. He could have sworn he'd turned the radio off, seeing as there were no dedicated rap stations around Arcadia, but it seemed not.  
And then he saw the truck pull in. It was about the same size as his, but a hell of a lot more beat up: it was nearly impossible to say what color it was. It turned much too sharply for comfort as it pulled, then quickly accelerated into the parking lot against the demands of the 5mph sign at the entrance. It zoomed in with no further ado, and he could hear the brakes screech as it parked across two handicapped spots. He didn't even raise his head, but rather shrunk slightly as the blue-haired bitch hopped out, not even bothering to lock her door.

He wanted to give her a minute and ensure that they met at their established rendezvous. He really didn't need any part of this conversation happening in public, and honestly, it was bad enough that they were meeting at Blackwell. That punk-ass feminazi probably thought that it could keep her safe to meet in such a public place. It probably didn't even occur to her how invincible he was in a place like this. Still, he needed this to go smoothly, or he could kiss his agreement with Jefferson goodbye. He'd just be a pawn for who knows how long - however long it took him to die, at least.  
In that line of thinking, he looked down at his messages. Just this single glaring fuck-you that had fucked up everything for these past few days.

 **?:** You want me to treat you like an adult who can get things done on his own? Impress me. I'd like nothing more than to be proud of you. I'm not there yet.

This fucker talked just like his dad. No wonder they got along so fucking handily - if they weren't so dominant in their spaces, they probably would be literal butt buddies by this point. Then again, they were probably too old for each other.

Nathan rolled down his window and had a smoke, trying to settle his nerves a little. They didn't seem to be working, as in the past class period he'd ditched he had accumulated the butts of a good five cigarettes, soon to be a sixth.  
God, he just couldn't get that image of her out of his mind. The look in her eyes as they all went cold. It had taken them over an hour to realize what had happened to her, but he should have known just by looking at the eyes that said 'fuck you'. He was always going to remember her as Rachel in the dark room - the memories of her as Rachel his friend were ashes. The fucker had laid a curse or something on him before she died, because he just could not seem to piece together those memories at all. Just Rachel in the fucking dark room.

Opening the door of his truck, Nathan grabbed his handgun from the central compartment between the seats, slipped out, and stuck it in his jacket pocket, pulling his jacket down to help conceal it. He could probably pay this bitch off if he really had to, but there was always the possibility that she would demand more, later, and he could not have that. He could not have one more goddamn person with power over him. No, she was going to go away, and she was going to shut up. That was the only possibility.

She was still talking to people out on the campus as Nathan skirted the edge of the quad in front of the gym, trying his best to avoid being seen before the rendezvous. It looked like she was talking to the skater punks that Rachel had been tight with before she moved past spice and weed and became a proper junkie. Best to move quickly, though - he had no idea how she would respond in public, so he needed to get into a situation he could control.  
Luckily, no one inside the building was paying the slightest bit of attention, and there was still enough foot traffic inside that Nathan didn't draw any attention to himself as he slipped inside the girls' bathroom.

He made a quick check along the stalls, but they were all loose enough in place to indicate that there was nobody in them. He exhaled, raising his hands to his hair in frustration. That would have been his one simple, simple delay on this whole thing so he could come up with a better solution - that there'd be someone in here. But there wasn't.  
He tugged his hair briefly, but then he tried to calm himself down, but it just wasn't working. How the fuck was he going to get this girl to keep her mouth shut?  
"It's cool Nathan . . . don't stress." He moved his hands a little, as if this were proper dialogue, "You're okay, bro. Just count to three . . ."

His breathing was heavy and he just now realized that. He was wired to an extreme, on top of the half-pack of nicotine, and he needed to be calm for this whole thing to go down. He gripped the sides of a sink, the cool ceramic doing nothing against the heat of his own skin.  
"Don't be scared - you own this school." Yeah, that was right. What the fuck could anyone do to him? He finally looked himself in the eye - haggard though he was, he was a scary motherfucker, and the knowledge he had left him with complete freedom. What could this bitch do? "If I wanted, I could blow it up. You're the boss."  
He knew that wasn't true, and it forced him back into third person - maybe the person on the other side of the mirror believed they were the boss, but he sure didn't.

He tilted his head to the side, hearing footsteps coming straight towards the door, and only gripped the sink tighter as the blue-haired chick in the beanie entered with a face so pissed-off she had to have plastered it on before entering. It was a game face. His wasn't on just yet, so he didn't bother to turn.  
God, he was freaking out. "So, what do you want?" he asked.

She didn't focus on him immediately, though. She was overconfident - she strode down the line of stalls, opening them individually to check them. "I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say." _What the fuck was that supposed to mean?_ "Now, let's get down to bidness."

So it was money. Of course it was. What else did it ever take to hush people up but money and violence? "I've got nothing for you," he responded, the bitterness cutting in to convey his seriousness. This girl was not getting shit out of him - she was lucky to have escaped so much more luckily than others.

She turned, having reached the end of the row: "Wrong. You got hella cash."

Oh god, this girl has no idea what she's fucking saying. "That's my family, not me," he bantered, knowing this would do little to dissuade her. People didn't think things through when they could get their hands on a few dollars. They rarely seemed to consider the cost of money.

Her voice sounded like rolling ones eyes felt: "Oh boo hoo, poor little rich kid. I know you been pumpin' drugs n' shit to kids around here..." - ah, no wonder. That's why she'd been talking to those punk kids before. She knew about his business with Frank. She really knew too much.

And that was a fact she seemed to realize - she snapped over to Nathan's other side, grabbing the sink's end and putting her face just inches from his. "I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them."  
Just the words 'respectable family' made Nathan cringe, and he averted his eyes even from the reflection of his girl. Was she seriously so stupid that she thought they would bother with hush money? Nathan was too fucking valuable for a girl like this to get in their way. She'd fucking disappear if she breathed a word to Dad.

She just wouldn't stop taunting him, though. "Man, I can see the headlines now-" oh, oh, and she wasn't the only one. She needed to back off, or she'd end up in a junkyard just like Rachel. She needed to back off. She thought being drugged and taken to a dorm room was bad? He needed to handle this himself - for everyone's sake.

"Leave them out of this, bitch."  
She just wouldn't stop.  
"I can tell everyone Nathan Prescott is a punk ass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself-"

That did it. She'd seen him. She had seen him that night. He hoped she would remember nothing, or close to nothing. But she must have heard what he'd said that night through the camera.

Nathan reached into his pocket. "You don't know who the fuck I am or who you're messing around with!" Why couldn't she just let it go? How could she not realize, how could she not see how much worse she was making this for herself?  
He leveled the gun at her face.

Her eyes darted around, as if someone might burst out of the stalls she'd already checked to save her. But no one was going to save her. This bitch just needed to shut the fuck up, and there was no one who could make her but Nathan. "Where'd you get that? What are you doing?"  
Nathan lowered the gun a little, but stepped forward, making sure she wouldn't immediately escape. He needed to threaten her, scare her, make sure this would never come back. He just needed to fix this.  
"Come on, put that thing down!" she yelled, but he knew it was a plea. She was powerless as soon as something got real. Of course she was. She had no idea what she was up against on any level.

"Don't EVER tell me what to do." Nathan slammed his fist up near her ear and leaned close, as intimately as if he were going to kiss her. As he'd learned with Rachel, there was little more intimate than the threat of death. "I'm so SICK of people trying to control me!" This girl couldn't. She had known her place when she was curled up on the floor, staring helplessly away. She'd been nothing. And reminding her that she was nothing made Nathan feel like something other than nothing.

She started trying to diffuse as he dug the barrel of the gun into her gut. "You're gonna get in hella more trouble for this than drugs-"  
But who cared? No one would do shit to Nathan. Maybe nobody cared about Nathan, but he was valuable. This girl was nothing. And there was no way somebody like her was going to get in the way of what he could become, no way that she would ruin everything for his family.

So he remembered a few words. Words that helped to remind him that he was nothing. They came out his own, but they reminded him deeply of words he'd heard before: "Nobody would even miss your 'punk ass' would they?" He dug the gun further into her gut - a final warning. She had to accept the situation at hand. She had to just give up.

But instead, she fought. With whatever ounce of panicked strength she had left in her, she brought her hands up to Nathan's chest. "Get that gun away from me, psycho!" Her voice was like a child's. But as Nathan tried to grip something, to steady himself, frightened by the force, he squeezed the trigger.

 ** _BANG!_**

The kickback was more intense from a little pistol than he imagined, and he stumbled back as the girl's body fell forward, onto her face.

Oh god, what had he done? As his hand released the gun, he didn't even process the shout from behind him - it was hardly any different than the shouts he heard all the time. But still, it was there for a moment, "No!" and he knew somebody was behind him. Rachel, probably . . . she was always there in her posters, watching him.

"Oh no . . ." he cried as the body hit the floor. The blood began to leak out immediately like he couldn't even imagine, her arms extended in front of her as if that shove that set off the gun would be immortalized. "No no no no no!" he said, crouching down beside her, hesitating for a moment before placing his hands over her wound. She was dying so fast, so fast. He didn't know people could even die this fast or this warm.

But then, he could see her, out of the corner of his eye. Not Rachel - just some girl he'd never seen before in a gray hoodie. In his panic, his facade broke entirely, and his own voice sounded boyish and weak to him. He raised up his hand to her, and begged, "Help me."

Her hands began to lower from her mouth, held there in shock as they were, but they moved so slow, so slowly. And, in fact, he noticed that his own hands moved in much the same way - as if passing through water, and slowing down all the time. What was going on . . .?  
And then, it all stopped. Just for a second, the whole scene froze.

The girl's hands went back up to her mouth. The body's blood began to flow back into its wound while leaving no stain. Nathan stood upright, and the gun snapped up from the ground into his hand. The girl's body flew back up as if carried on strings, and flung itself against the wall, and Nathan stepped forward until her arms were against his chest, and she was yelling at him, and she was walking into the room, and he was walking to the school, and-

Nathan jolted awake in the driver's seat of his car. The truck turned sharply and roared into the parking lot before, wheels screeching, stopping across two parking spaces. The blue haired girl got out.

Nathan was breathing heavily in the raw panic, and it wasn't until she was out of his sight that he remembered that he hated the music on, and turned it off.

The time was 3:57, and class was about to end.

Was it . . . just another dream? No way, there was no way. And perhaps the best evidence that it was not a dream came in the form of what was different about right now than it ought to be - in Nathan's trembling right hand there was a silvery gun, leaning against the dash after having turned off the radio with the clip. There was blood on the barrel. "No fucking way. No fucking way. WHAT THE FUCK!"

* * *

So, he'd had a vision of the future. Or, more properly, he had reset time. He'd gone back in time. He had erased what he'd just done. He was given an opportunity to keep everything from crashing down around him. And he knew a few new things to help that be true.  
\- The blue haired girl would fight back  
\- But he couldn't kill her.  
\- There was a girl watching.

But what could he risk changing? It was not like he'd never seen TV - changing things always caused problems. But if he wasn't supposed to change anything, why was he even given this chance?

It took him a few minutes of rumination, but finally, he settled on a plan. He'd have to do it over. He would still have to go to the bathroom . . . but he'd make it go better this time.

Nathan pulled out his regular cell and scrolled down near the bottom of his contacts until he located Trevor, whose last name he still had yet to get. He clicked and waited about eight seconds for a reply.

 _Trevor:_ "Yo, Nathan, brother what's up? I'm on the other line with Dana."

 _Nathan:_ "That's real fuckin' great. There's a girl you're going to talk to in a minute - blue hair, beanie, tall. And she's going to ask you about my dealing. If you haven't said anything yet, don't. Say you don't know shit and you'll get a discount this week."

 _Trevor:_ "Huh, what? Y'mean Chloe? She didn't mention she'd be stopping by. But, hey, I mean, your business is your business, I won't say anything. You doin' all right, man?"

 _Nathan:_ "I'm fine - keep to your own business too."

And then, he hung up.

Now, for the most part, he could let things play out much as they had the first time. The primary difference - he had to not shoot. Just before she pushed him, he'd have to back up all on his own. He had to control the situation. He could not lose his cool. And about that girl that watched . . . once Chloe was gone, he could handle her on his own. It couldn't be that hard - she was even less noticeable than this Chloe girl, though that might have plenty to do with the fact that she hadn't been making a nuisance of herself for the past few months, plastering posters of a face Nathan wanted nothing more than to forget all over town.

When he entered the bathroom, he was quick to notice what he should have recognized the first time - a torn photograph in the center of the room. He took a step forward and looked down, and could recognize even from the halves that the girl in it wore a gray hoodie, and stood in front of a big wall filled with polaroid photographs.

When he turned towards the mirror again, it was not the fear of the unknown variables in this situation that filled him, but fear of the known ones.

"It's cool Nathan... don't stress. You're okay, bro... just count to three."  
"Don't be scared - you own this school. If I wanted, I could blow it up. You're the boss."  
Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan could see movement in one of the mirrors - that girl was still here. Why was she around that corner? Either way, it didn't seem he could avoid that fact. The girl was here.

Chloe entered.  
"So what do you want?" He was breathless.

"I hope you checked the perimeter, as my step-ass would say. Now, let's talk bidness."

This was all the same. Nathan Prescott had gone back in time.

"I got nothin' for you." And he still didn't. At least, he hoped. He had a bullet that would produce the dried blood on the gun in his pocket, but she had already gotten it once. She didn't need it again.  
"Wrong. You got hella cash." It was about the money. Of course. She had no idea. Still, after all of this, she had no idea.

"That's my family, not me."

"Oh boo-hoo, poor little rich kid."  
To confirm his fears, this time around, she stayed quiet while she moved to Nathan's other side - she didn't bring up his dealing. She just gripped the sink, but this time she didn't have as much leverage. She wouldn't push so hard.  
"I bet your respectable family would help me out if I went to them. Man, I can see the headlines now-"

"Leave them out of this, bitch!" But she just wouldn't stop. She was so fucking stupid.

"I can tell everyone that Nathan Prescott is a punkass who begs like a little girl and talks to himself-"

Nathan was surprised how reflexive it was to retrieve the gun this time around. It was so easy, even if the rage felt so different. He was trying to keep her alive, and she was so incredibly ungrateful. But she just wouldn't stop pushing.

"You don't know who I am, or who you're messing around with!" And that was the fucking truth.

Oh, she trembled once she could _see_ the gun. "Where did you get that? What are you doing? Come on, put that thing down!"  
She wouldn't get the message if he stopped now. He was going to have to go right to the edge if he was going to never hear from her again. "Don't EVER tell me what to do. I'm so SICK of people trying to control me!"

 ** _SMASH!_**

 _What?_

The fire alarm began, and Nathan lowered his gun as he looked around. What? The fire alarm hadn't gone off . . . the first time. "No way . . ." he growled, his the role broken, confusion coloring his face.  
And then, there was a rather sharp pain between his legs as Chloe's knee smashed his testicles against his pelvis with the force of someone who knew that their life was in danger - for the second time with the same man.  
He bowed over in response to the pain, giving out a loud groan, as her fingers tripped his shoulder and shoved him to the ground. "Don't you ever touch me again, freak!" she shouted as he fell, dropping his gun on the ground.

She was out the door in a flash, but Nathan tried to take another moment to recover. As he turned around, he noticed that the girl around the corner was thoroughly hidden this time, and he saw no indication that she was there. His hand landed near one half of her photo, though, and he took a brief moment to note that she was brunette. Then, he grabbed his gun.  
"Another shitty day," he murmured as he got to his feet, knowing how much worse it could have been, perhaps not knowing precisely how bad it had become.


	2. The Principal

Nathan really did not think through much further than not-shooting Chloe, especially due to the pain he was supporting right now as he stumbled out of the girl's bathroom. The fire alarm hadn't been going for more than twenty seconds, but students were already funneling out the door. The blue haired girl was near the entrance, talking to a member of the security staff, so Nathan took the opportunity to try and blend among everyone else, slipping his pistol back into his coat as if nothing even happened. It amazed him how simple it was, really, to have pulled a gun on someone, murdered them, un-murdered them, then just walk away with nothing further.

What should he have done in that situation, honestly? What could he have done to make sure she stayed quiet (would she even stay quiet now?) without killing her? He may have done some fucked up shit in his life but he hadn't ever killed someone. Well . . . nobody who died.  
Nathan's hand was still tightly wrapped around the grip of the pistol when a light but deliberate touch appeared on his shoulder. Nathan turned, suddenly separated by the situation, to see Principal Wells just a few steps out of his office, a single finger of his large hand on Nathan.

Oh, look, another pawn. "What do you want?" Nathan asked with an abrasiveness that essentially added up to a sneer, though his body became defensive and he immediately stepped out of Wells's touch.  
Wells always took a deep breath before saying something, and Nathan could not tell if he was doing it to give himself time to prepare for speaking or if it just helped him maintain the low rasp of his voice. Wells took such a breath, and then said, "Mister Prescott. I think it would be best we have a talk in my office."

Nathan looked around him, noticing the last few students exiting the building, as well as the Chloe. Nathan gestured with his left hand over towards the body of students and asked, "It looks to me like we're evacuating, not lecturing right now."  
Wells tried to give a cold stare, but he was the worst at it. He was just somebody who ate blackmail and kept things in order - he had no legitimate authority, and he knew it. So did Nathan. So did everyone. But still, in this context, he was in the position of (supposed) power, and he reinforced, "Now, Mr. Prescott. We have something to talk about."

Nathan aimed to stare him down, but it was pointless. Nathan shrugged, still not willing to bring his right hand out of his pocket, and with a sharp sound of disgust, said, "Whatthefuckever." He stepped sharply past the principal and walked into the little lounge in front of the office, then turned into the office.

* * *

It was about five minutes before Principal Wells followed Nathan's suit, and Nathan just sat drumming his fingers on the table for the first several minutes. Right before he entered, though, the intercom turned on, and Nathan heard:

 _"_ _Nathan Prescott, please report to the principal's office immediately,"_

Which struck him as a little odd. Annoyed, he leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the principal's desk as well as he could, his feet extending right in front of Wells's computer. It wasn't even comfortable, but Nathan just wanted the moment of resistance and power.

When Wells entered, he initially acted as if he didn't even notice, although a brief moment of pause from him indicated to Nathan that that was not true. Still, as he walked past Nathan, all he said was, "Well, now, I just heard a very interesting report about you from a fellow student."  
Then, he was seated, and laced his own fingers together, elbows on the desk. "If you'd lower your feet Mr. Prescott, it would allow us to have a proper conversation."  
Nathan was clearly uninterested in either of these details, because he made no move. Instead, he just finally removed his hands from his jacket and settled them across his chest defiantly. "A report, huh? What'd they have to say?"

Wells was quiet for a moment while he waited for Nathan to pull down his feet, but when it was clear that wasn't happening, he just took another characteristic breath before continuing, "As it appears, some minutes ago you were 'in the girl's bathroom, waving a gun around.' Now, that doesn't sound like the activities of a respectable student such as yourself to me, but-"

"It was that quiet bitch in the gray hoodie, wasn't it?" Well, at least it didn't take long to see how that would come back to bite him. Nathan wondered if he could still rewind, maybe drag that girl out with Chloe to intimidate her, too. Two girls would be a lot harder to control, though . . .

"Ms. Caulfield seemed concerned about your health. She said you were speaking to yourself, that you seemed par-"

Nathan was not going to let him finish. Honestly, it gave him so much satisfaction to keep this stupid facade that the principal kept up running on three wheels - perhaps this guy could live in constant denial of what went on around here, but that had never been Nathan's specialty. The only way to stop thinking about it was to stop thinking at all. "Caulfield? Like, Max fucking Caulfield? The hipster shit Victoria's bitching about all the time? What a dumb ass - nothings like her don't have anyone at their back."  
It was a little funny how annoying these people Nathan saw as nothing could be when given the opportunity. It was Nathan's fault for putting himself in a situation so vulnerable that either one of them could get to him, but it gave him a weird sense of pleasure knowing that they were there, that they were the gnats on his skin, because he could crush them whenever he needed to. Even in places that weren't practically fucking designed to exploit teenage girls could barely protect them, and here they were attending a school that actively preyed on them. These girls were just fucking stupid, and something about that made Nathan feel great.

Wells gave a grunt of frustration, but he just had to eat his way past it, like he always did. If Nathan did a good job, he would be what Wells thought about as he drank himself unconscious tonight. And, hey, it was a lot more fun to get shitfaced angry than it was to get shitfaced guilty. "Yes, Maxine Caulfield, a student of Mr. Jefferson's and an out-of-state student. She seemed very upset by what she saw in the bathroom. I trust you didn't say anything . . . *revealing during this little episode, did you? Nothing that might be of concern to this school or your family?"

Nathan shrugged, lifting his hands a little to emphasize how unsure he was about this. "Well, I mean, it's a bathroom, you should be a little revealed, at least."  
Wells made no comment, but just kept his flat stare on Nathan.  
Nathan sighed and lowered his hands back down onto his stomach. "Nah, I didn't say much. She might have learned something from that blue-haired bitch Chloe, though."

Wells's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "There was another student in the bathroom with you?"

Nathan's head tilted as he realized what that meant. "You don't know about that?" he asked. But Wells's look of confusion was enough for him. A smirk appeared on Nathan's lips for just a moment, and he decided it was time for an experiment.

Nathan raised his right hand into the air. He felt some strange pressure in his palm, as if there was some great resistance right in front of him that he was applying just the lightest of pressure to. And, feeling that, he pushed against it, hard, though the force was not physical . . . it was hard to describe. But it made him feel like the very skin of his hand was unraveling itself from his flesh, though just for a moment.

". . . revealing during this little episode, did you? Nothing that might be a concern to this school or your family?"

The smirk was still on Nathan's face when he recognized the scene from some forty seconds ago, and he wiggled a little in his chair with profound smugness. "Nah, I didn't say shit. And I don't even keep a gun on me - I'm not fucking stupid, you know."

Now Principal Wells's eyebrows shot up instead of crushing down, as if this were a terribly new revelation which, if it were true to him, probably would be. "Really now? So what were you holding in your pocket when you left the bathroom, or when I walked in here?"

Nathan shrugged for a second, then reached in to his pocket~ and retrieved the pistol. "This," he said, and a deep scowl appeared on the principal's face.

"What are you doing?" Wells asked as Nathan placed the pistol down on the ground, then swept it forward towards the desk with his foot.  
"Hiding my gun," Nathan replied simply.  
"You're not doing a very good job," Wells growled, and for a second it looked like he was reaching for his phone.

However, by that time, Nathan had relaxed back into his chair, and he raised his hand again. He rewound.

Nathan pulled out his pockets, showing their emptiness to the principal. "Don't know what the fuck you're talking about, man, but I definitely don't have a gun in my pockets. Like I said, I'm not fucking stupid."

Wells nodded, glad to see that he was wrong about reading Nathan, though he figured he could still have a gun on him. Still, he was not terribly worried so long as it was not visible, as he doubted the impact of a single student's complaint with no admission of guilt and no evidence to back her up would bring any negative press to the area. The Prescotts received a wide array of falsified and legitimate accusations all the time, but they were never actually touched by them. They were immortal to such things, Wells knew that. He just hoped Nathan would not be so stupid. Speaking of which . . .  
"Now, what I brought you in here to speak about. If you'll move your feet, I have something to show you on the monitor," he said, gesturing to the computer monitor.

Nathan shrugged again, but pulled his feet down, sat up, and peered at the screen as Wells opened up an e-mail, followed an attached link, and turned the monitor so that they could both see it clearly.  
Nathan recognized the video immediately, as well as the link. .com. Victoria's commentary and banter while a drugged Kate Marsh falls all over a few athletes and tries (successfully, in some cases), to stick her tongue in their mouths. The video would be of pretty minor concern, except that along the second half, Nathan appears and pulls her away from the crowd. She falls over him for a bit, but it's clear he talks to her for maybe twenty seconds before leaving her to pass out on a couch.

Nathan snickers. "Yeah, Marsh's little porn video - everyone's seen it. So what?" He thought about reclining back again, but he knew this was not a positive thing to have everywhere - it was not good that he was scene by something so sober as a camera. So he could not exude quite the confidence it would take for that just yet.

Wells seemed almost shocked by Nathan's reaction, and he gestured at the screen again. "So what? That's you, Mr. Prescott, with an intoxicated student at one of your parties. I know what this is, and your friend Miss Chase has caused quite a problem in publishing it. How do you plan to handle this? In all rightness, you should likely be suspended, along with Miss Chase for your misconduct at this party, although I am well aware that is impossible." Wells closed out of the web page and turned the monitor back toward himself.

Nathan just rolled his eyes, "Oh just fucking try, _Raymond_ , you haven't got shit for hands to touch me with. You'd be out of a job so fast, and I think you'd find yourself more than suspended if they found the pictures of Katie you've got whereverthefuck you store that shit. How do you like those, by the way - up to your standards? The one of her on her face is mine. Or do you prefer it when you can see their e-"

"Be QUIET, NATHAN PRESCOTT!" Roared Wells, his hand slamming down on 'quiet' as he stood in his seat and loomed over Nathan. To be perfectly honest, he was a pretty big guy even when Nathan was seated, and Nathan flinched before he remembered that this was just the lashing-out of a weak coward.  
He just stood, breathing heavily, lenses flaring as he tried to bring himself back down from the spike of rage. Nathan was used to these outbursts, and he knew they'd die out after a moment, so he just stared back at Wells with a flat affect until the man finally forfeited, and seated himself again.

"Look," Nathan said in a lower, raspier, more conciliatory tone, "This video means nothing, all right? Whatever Marsh was before, whatever standing she had at this school, it's gone now, all right? She's nothing. She's not some Rachel Amber somebody'd make posters for in the first place, all right? But nobody protects girls like her, not once they've shown what sluts they are. This video will bury her, not us. Chill out, all right? Have a drink, shit."

Wells was clearly still angry, but there was nothing more that he could do. He stared at Nathan for a little longer, then turned his attention down to his desk. He quickly retrieved some meaningless piece of paperwork to busy himself with. "That will be all, Mr. Prescott."

Nathan raised his hands in a 'yay' sign before standing in front of the desk for a moment#. Then, he leaned down, grabbing his gun by the top of the barrel.  
"What are you doing?" Wells asked.  
Nathan replied, "Ahh, just getting my gun."  
Wells started: "What?"

Nathan waved it for a second, then dropped it into his pocket.

Wells began again, "How did you-"

But Nathan didn't give a shit - he just raised his hand and took those seconds back. Wells didn't even look up this time around, though Nathan took a few seconds to revel in his newfound power. "See ya, P." Nathan said, and sauntered out of the office.


	3. The Fight

As Nathan found his way out of the exit, he was quick to notice the trio of Courtney, Taylor, and Victoria making their way around the corner from the dorms, passing by the security officer, Madsen, on their way. The way they were crossing campus, Nathan figured they were probably heading for the parking lot, so he made a line to cut them off a little past the Blackwell fountain. Victoria looked a little rough - a deeper scowl than normal rested on her face, and little spots of white, though desaturated, sat in her clothes. Probably in a related fashion, Courtney and Taylor seemed ill at ease, which tended to be true whenever Victoria was too unhappy.

Nathan always found the trio a little odd. While Taylor was usually around for the sake of Victoria's attention, Courtney did not even try to compete for it. She tagged along with the other two for the social prestige and power more than for their actual company, and, in a small way, Nathan got the impression she liked having the indirect line to the Prescotts through the Victoria for the sake of the Vortex Club, which she and Hayden primarily were responsible for (and it's not like he contributed much except female members).

One thing that always helped to affirm the structure of this little group was the fact that Nathan rarely directly addressed either of the two minions - if they wanted anything out of Nathan, they went through Victoria. And Victoria was always good at phrasing things to Nathan as if helping her or the club out was a way to say 'fuck you' to his family, as opposed to just eating out of his father's hand.

"Yo, Tori, what the fuck happened to you? Vortex Club decorations get the better of you?"  
Victoria paused, along with her minions, and made a quick show of getting ready to complain: crossing her arms, rolling her eyes, and adopting a haughty, uneven posture. That was always a good way to start with her: help her complain. "God, don't even get me started," she said, obviously 100% ready to get started, "That dumbass creep janitor dropped a bucket of paint and it splashed all over me. The gang and I are going to go buy a replacement or three - no way is this shit washing out. What was up with the announcement earlier?"

Nathan let out a sound of disgust, then replied, "The principal was looking to scapegoat me for the fire alarm before anyone even confirmed there was no fire, no surprise. But I let him know I saw who did it - that stupid Caulfield girl you've mentioned before."

Victoria's eyebrows darted upward a little, then her lip curled down into an awkward frown. Then, she exhaled as she shook her head. "Whatever, I guess, that girl is fucking weird. Today, in class, she somehow for like the first fucking time spoke up with answers, always just as I was about to answer them. She was actually super polite when this shit happened, though," she said, gesturing down at her clothes, but then she shrugged. "Guess you just don't know what she'll do."  
Nathan found the look in her eye a little weird, because they would dart around a little every time she changed phrases about the Caulfield girl. It wasn't the same groaning, bitching tone she normally took about her.

Nathan shrugged heavily, similarly confused. "I guess. . . fuckin' not, huh? Did she, um, were all the answers she gave ones you knew the answer to?"  
Victoria's head cocked a little to the side, as this was really atypical of his responses. Normally he'd just throw out some insults for girls that pissed her off, talk about what hoes they were or something, not clarifying. It was way analytical and boyish of him, which were not traits she tended to seek out. "Um, yeah, I guess so? She didn't answer that much, but a lot more than normal, and yeah, I knew all the answers she gave."

Nathan nodded, but his eyes were down and to the side a little, thinking. "Fuckin' weird . . ." he muttered, but more to himself than to Victoria.

Courtney looked up from her phone, "Hey, Vic, if we're gonna' hit up the bank before we go, we should go now - it closes at 5pm. It's 4:37."  
Victoria nodded, though she looked a little irritated. "All right, yeah. See ya later, Nate."  
"Yeah, later," he agreed, and stepped out of their way, giving a little two-fingered wave off of his forehead as they made their way to the parking lot.

Nathan made his way down the path, though his head cocked a little to the side as a kid off to his right snickered as he passed by. He took the time to stop and glare at the weird fuck, and the boy's expression immediately flattened out, and he busied himself with his phone to get away from Nathan's gaze. Well, at least that was the right response - but what was he snickering about?  
Nathan did not have too much time to wonder about that, because he heard someone arguing loudly - or at least, an argumentative tone, because the reply was high-pitched and defensive. He continued forward, but stuck close to the wall that separated the ramp down to the dorms from the main campus, and stuck his head out slightly to observe. He quickly ducked his head back, as Madsen made his way around the corner, and Nathan tried to look casual, pulling out his phone and leaning up against the wall as if this was just how he spent his time. He looked up as Madsen pulled up the ramp, inputting his lock code without looking.

Madsen stopped when he noticed Nathan, though, and quickly placed his hands down next to his belt so his chest would be wide open - an easy display of dominance for a man that was two inches smaller than the boy he was trying to intimidate. "Is there a problem, huh?" Madsen asked gruffly, which was an aspect of him that Nathan appreciated. Almost everyone on campus, save Jefferson, was so frightened of what Nathan represented that they referred to him as 'Mr. Prescott', but Madsen at least made the effort to pretend Nathan was just another student.  
But, then again, Nathan _wasn't_ just another student. "I don't think so. Although, my car could use that job I heard you were going to take care of soon - I'd prefer to avoid being pestered by police every time I try and buy groceries."

David grunted, understanding the power play there - he owed Sean Prescott a favor, and honestly, it could have turned out worse. Honestly, if he just detached the idea of the car from the Prescotts, he'd likely enjoy the fix-up he had promised to do. "I'd prefer you didn't bring that up here - you're a student here, and I'm head of security. On my personal time, I'll get that done." He moved to leave.  
"Yeah, whatever," Nathan responded, but this provoked no response from the guard, who was making his way back towards the main building now.

Nathan peered around the corner again, and this time saw Caulfield and Marsh talking for a brief moment, before the two broke apart and Marsh made her way towards the dorms. Caulfield watched her go, then turned her attention up the ramp and began to walk this way.  
Oh, shit. Nathan was, on either sound, not in friendly territory, and he didn't want a confrontation here, where he could not control the circumstances. Fuck, what was he going to do?

He'd only taken a step or two back by the time Caulfield rounded the corner and found him standing there. "Whoah, what the fuck, Nathan?" Max asked, and similarly took a step back.

The boy who had snickered earlier looked up again.

"What?" Nathan asked, rather aggressively, right hand in his jacket again, his left gesturing around as he talked, "I'm just going to my dorm, what the fuck is your problem?"

Max looked over her shoulder, hoping to find Marsh there still, probably, but she found no support. She could not see the fact that there were now three students looking at them - Harris, DeCosta, and the snickering boy. Well, Decosta maybe, but it's not like he is much in the way of backup.  
What he didn't expect was the hostile tone she took, instead of placating: "My problem is with students who bring guns to school, Nathan. Whatever's going on with you, how is anyone supposed to feel safe now?"

Oh, god, she said that loudly. The three guys must have heard that. This was shit. "What the FUCK did you just say, bitch?" Nathan asked, taking a step forward.  
This was too public, way too public. So when Nathan took a step forward, he paused, stopped looking at Caulfield as she replied (she didn't seem to respond to his sudden lack of eye contact), and then walked down the ramp towards the dorm.

"What the . . .?" he heard her ask, and then he raised his hand in the air.

It was sort of funny, the way her body twitched around in conversation as time reversed, gestures made in rapid time - but the strange thing was how from this perspective she wasn't even having it with anyone, they were just actions with no context. He rewound until he saw her walking backwards, head down, hand on her bag, and then released time, and watched her round the corner. When she was around it, he walked back up the ramp and peered around the corner, and waited to see where she would go: it rapidly became apparent she was making a beeline for the parking lot, but to obscure the fact that he was following her, he waited for her to descend to the lot itself before walking back onto the campus.

* * *

In the parking lot, things were much more controlled. Juliet was in the corner of the lot, but she seemed preoccupied with her phone. Frank's RV sat in the corner, but it sat still for now - Nathan would probably hit it up in a moment, though, even if these were not strictly business hours.  
Caulfield was only with one other person - the science pipsqueak that Nathan had heard was tied to be their valedictorian, though Nathan was pretty sure that there was some Asian girl who had enrolled in all AP classes to beat him out in this last year. Nathan had never spoken to her, but they had an engineering class together, which was one of the few classes he generally showed up to, first period. In fact, Nathan was pretty sure she sat with this guy here during class . . . Graham?  
Either way, one barely-pubescent boy and a tiny girl. This would be easy.

Nathan strode confidently forward, making sure to keep his hands out of his pockets this time. She knew he had a gun - he needed to look like he wouldn't use it. Panic would screw him, he just needed the right level of fear to control her. "Max Caulfield, right?" He walked right in front of her, duplicating a level of intimate distance that he had created with Chloe so she practically had to lean over backward over Graham's car. "You're one of the Jefferson's photo groupies..." he remarked.

Graham leaned forward, but Nathan effortlessly pushed him back outside of Nathan's space.  
"I'm one of his students . . ." she said evasively, obviously less keen to engage Nathan in this situation. The tables had turned in his favor.  
"Whatethefuckever," Nathan growled, not in the mood to play games. "I know you like to take pictures, especially when you're hiding out in the bathrooms," - as soon as the bathrooms were brought up, she stared down at Nathan's jacket, recognizing where he had his gun stashed.

Could she possibly know that he was going to shoot Chloe? Why had she hit the fire alarm the second time, but not the first? "You best tell me what you told the principal. Now!" he demanded, needing to get to the bottom of things without showing his hand.  
Her eyes darted around nervously as she looked for some avenue of escape, so Nathan quickly followed up: "Answer me, bitch!" - he didn't have time for her to construct some clever lie.

What he did not expect was for her eyes to level to his, for them to sit still calmly, and for her voice to come out so flat. "I told him the truth. A student had a gun."

That evasive shit just pissed Nathan off, but her eye contact freaked him out a little. Not only had she seen him with, and obviously been scared by, a gun, but he could have sworn Victoria told him she had Asperger's or some shit like that - he had expected she wouldn't have been able to maintain eye contact, even if she could stick up to him. "No, you told him _I_ had a gun. That's why he dragged me into his office!" That wasn't strictly true, but even in situations like this, Nathan had to maintain appearances.  
The Caulfield girl basically scoffed and responded, "And did what? Give you a stern lecture?"

God, fuck, this girl knew how to get on Nathan's nerves. As soon as she saw she wasn't escaping, she fought back. That reminded him a little of . . .  
 _"Fuck you,"_ he heard, as if resonating, in his mind.  
His voice almost became unsteady at the thought, "Nobody . . . nobody lectures me. Everybody tries, though," - Rachel, Wells, Jefferson, his father . . . he nearly giggled just thinking about the list - "They try."

Caulfield leaned forward a little, and her tone lowered, but stayed firm; "You should talk to somebody, Nathan."

What the fuck did that mean? His fists clenched in fury - as if he wasn't fucking talking to people already. "Do not analyze me! I pay people for that." His tone lowered too, a little. "Worry about yourself, Max Caulfield."  
This was advice she quickly ignored. "Take a step back, Nathan Prescott."

Nathan must have been visibly shaking. "What the fuck did you just say to me, bitch?"

But Graham reached forward and tapped Nathan on the shoulder. However he meant it, Nathan was ready to blow. He turned a little towards the tiny dirtbag and, taking a step forward, slammed his forehead against Graham's, flooring the little bitch. Nathan took a step forward, smiling - surrounded by his peers, Nathan only felt powerful.  
The Caulfield girl was finally in action, though - Nathan felt hands grip the back of his arms to pull him away, and she screeched, "Hey! Leave him alone!," but that just set Nathan off more. Honestly, it just sounded like his mom.

He turned, breaking her grip with minimal effort, and his hand was quick to her throat, open up on her cheek so he could guide her without hurting her, though his thumb remained near the top of her windpipe. "Nobody tells me what to do! Not my parents, not the principal, not that whore in the bathroom-" just thinking about it curled his fingers in her hair, and he began to jerk her back and forth. Didn't she fucking understand that there was no point? Why did people like her even fight him?  
"Stop that! Right now!" her fingers came up to the side of his face, and her nails raked down his cheek. He flinched and took a step back as she stumbled back with a shove. She fell to the ground as he brought a hand up to his cheek to feel for blood.

A truck roared around the corner of the parking lot, and stopped dead right in front of Caulfield. It was her - the blue haired bitch. Chloe. Caulfield grabbed the hood of the car and pulled herself up.  
The girl inside's eyes went wide, and she leaned forward, as if in awe. "Max?" she inquired in her shock.  
Nathan could not see her eyes, but the Caulfield girl had a similar response from what he could tell: "Chloe?" she asked with the same wonder.

"No way. You again?" Nathan asked - between these two, his whole day was getting fucked up.

Then, suddenly, Nathan was bowled over as a large weight just fell on him - "Go, go! I got this," Graham called, but Nathan was quick to his feet.

The Caulfield girl fumbled for the door handle, but Nathan got to her faster, and slammed her body against the door of the truck. She let out a cry from pain, but at this point, Nathan was over the edge. What the fuck was going on.

"You don't have a FUCKING CLUE who you're messing with! If you don't both shut the fuck up then you're dead, you got it! You stupid fucking cun-"  
Max was just beginning to sprout tears at this point, but for some reason, Graham hadn't charged Nathan again. But then, Nathan saw why past Caulfield's head - a little black revolver was held steadily outward, straight at Nathan's head.

"Get the fuck away from her, Prescott. Get the fuck out of here."

Nathan's eyes must have been wide but his vision felt dark except for this thin black tube in the center of his vision. Chloe's eyes were wild and he knew she was afraid, afraid like she had been in the bathroom, but she was not so scared that she wouldn't lash out.  
In that moment, he recognized something familiar in her. And he knew she'd pull the trigger.

Nathan released Caulfield and took a few steps back, closer to Graham's car. "Sure. Whatthefuckever, you stupid bitch."  
Caulfield had collapsed when she was released, but when she stood up she began to beg Chloe to put the gun down, and even Graham took a step towards her, adopting a placating tone, asking her to put it down.

She was still considering pulling the trigger, Nathan realized.

And he rewound.

His hand was still outstretched, and he heard a weird blur of sound escape himself like: " _ooou_ uu again?"

And then, he fell to the ground as Graham tackled him back down. "Go, go! I got this," the little hero called as they both fell, but Nathan had an outlet this time. He rolled over as they fell, pinning down one of Graham's legs as he punched him repeatedly in the face, ensuring he'd stay down this time.

The blue haired girl leaned over and opened the door up for Caulfield. She called, "Get in, Max!", but the girl in pink hesitated for a moment.  
At least, until Nathan stood up from the not-getting-back-up-too-soon Graham, and his eyes fixed on her. Then, she practically dove into the truck to save herself.

"Get your punk asses out of there now!" Nathan lunged forward, but he kicked the door closed on them. Trying to drag Caulfield out would only duplicate what had just happened. He needed them scared, not physically hostile. "Don't even try to run!" he added, bashing his leg into the side of the car, but Chloe stepped on the gas. "Nobody messes with me!" he declared, but they were speeding off.

Shit, that went just as shit, almost, and Nathan was about to rewind, but then, from behind the corner of one of the cars, Madsen jogged out and blocked off Nathan from any pursuit, any real reaction.

"What in God's name do you think you're doing, boy? That was my step daughter's truck, you little asshole."  
Fuck, fuck, this wasn't good. How much of that had been witnessed.  
"Hey, don't you try and start shit, or you'll be out of a job so fast you'll have to sell that piece of shit truck for scrap metal, huh?"

Nathan had never seen Madsen - or, shit, any security guard - as pissed as he was in that moment, and he was about to give a roar of a response, but Graham on the ground groaned in pain. Madsen looked down at him, then to Nathan, back to Graham . . . and finally back to Nathan. "Get out of here Nathan, now, and act like this never happened, or you'll end up suspended, or arrested. I'm not going to deal with that shit - get out of here."

Nathan looked down at Graham and his slightly-bloodied face for a moment, then gave out a sign of disgust, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Whatthefuckever. You may want to keep your little bitch of a daughter under control - she's got a gun on her. God knows it would be shit if she was caught bringing a gun to your work." With that final threat under his belt, Nathan paced away towards the campus.

Still, something about this itched to him. About halfway across the parking lot, he stopped, pivoted, and pulled out his phone. As Madsen pulled Graham up and began to help him walk back towards the campus, Nathan took several shots of the duo. Madsen glared at him in response, while Graham seemed either to out of it or too scared to look at him. Nathan heard the RV in the corner of the parking lot start up.

Nathan smirked, and put his phone away.


	4. The Camera

It was almost sundown by the time that Victoria and the gang returned from shopping, and Nathan did not even initially notice them. He had been too busy receiving messages he had no interest in for the night to focus on anything really, and it's not like he was terribly troubled with getting his homework done tonight. Why do homework when you can peruse your digital portfolio at a school table, sins in full view of those who would be incapable of observing?

He had murdered a girl at 4:06pm today, and then he had taken it back. He had done a lot of fucked up shit in his life, but that was an element that had never been present - he could take it back. And, while he was at it, he got to show up that asshole of a principal, but even time travel couldn't fix some of his other problems. The girl, Chloe, might not be a problem herself anymore, but the flak he was getting for it from his father was plenty to compensate. Not that his father had said very much, but it was enough for Nathan.

 **Dad:** I heard you ran into some trouble today after class. I hope this won't be an ongoing conflict.

Nathan did not respond. Most parents might have been frightened, or at the very least deeply annoyed at that lack of response, but no fighting back from Nathan tended to mean that he got the message. And he did. If this cropped up again, Nathan was going to be in deep shit one way or another. Instead of turning the situation with Chloe into a win, a way to resolve how poorly Nathan had handled himself with Marsh, Nathan had only appeared more incompetent not only to Jefferson as a photographer, but to Dad as a son.

Nathan could do little about that, but his frustration became focused on his photography. Pleasing his father was next to impossible, but Jefferson . . . Nathan just had to get a bit better and fuck stuff up less. With time travel, the second part should be a piece of cake. Nathan would just have to keep the stupid bitches from the bathroom under control - although now, he figured he'd have to play it indirectly. He had no idea if he would be able to rewind taking a bullet to the stomach, never mind straight to the face like Chloe had intended for him.  
No, he'd have to play an indirect game with these girls. Chloe seemed sufficiently scared, but that Caulfield girl didn't seem to have enough fear in her. He'd fix that, one way or another - and next time, she wouldn't have that fag Graham being brave in such a stupid way. Nathan had enjoyed beating his ass, but he didn't savor the idea of the load of shit he'd be in if something like that were to happen again. His power over the security staff could only go so far.

There was a significant buffer of pictures in Nathan's camera to hide the treasures. The little shoot with Chloe had been partially deleted, leaving only three shots, but none of them were of the quality it would take to impress Jefferson, especially considering the connected failures. There was one directly into her eyes, but the expression was all wrong - it was like she'd seen a ghost, and not at all his taste. For one, she looked too old, and for another, her expression was too blank. There was another just as she was coming to, and that one had panic to it. It just might be good enough to hand into Jefferson, if Nathan worked on it with Neonvault a little. Then there was another one - one of her just curled up in the fetal position on the floor. He wasn't sure exactly how he felt about this one. The lack of emphasis on her face meant it was completely out as something to share with Jefferson, but Nathan still kept it around. It just felt so _familiar_. He could barely stand to look at her in person, but something about this picture stuck with him. She looked child-like, in an abstract way. And it was such a contrast, because a single glance at the picture could tell you how far from safe she was, and yet looking at it made him feel safe.

He didn't even recognize that it was snowing. He just became transfixed for a time, even once he moved on. He skipped through buffer pictures - landscape, random individuals, whatever - and came upon his photo shoot with Kate Marsh. Despite Jefferson's disappointment, there were many, many pictures here that Nathan was proud of, and had secretly kept even after the editing was completed on Neonvault and he was supposed to be rid of them. There was the one of her face-down that Jefferson had actually liked and added to the portfolio, but there were so many others, legitimate to the shoot and not. One of his favorites fit one of his favorite motifs, though he had taken it when he shouldn't have. It was Jefferson taking a moment to look at the prize of an unconscious girl in Nathan's trunk at the edge of the lights at the gas station they met up to carpool to the studio. The way he kept one gloved hand on the trunk's lid, peering down through his pretentious glasses, like he had just found a hidden chest filled with gold. It was cold and flat, but there was a feeling of accomplishment in the posture and in the eyes. Nathan had to capture it - Kate was barely in the picture, just the hint of white from her clothes. Jefferson was big, and she was small.  
If Nathan had been allowed to capture such a thing, Jefferson probably would have loved it.

Back a little further, and there were pictures of Nathan and Victoria at the Vortex Club party. There were plenty of others more in Nathan's tastes, of passed-out girls amidst a sea of motion, but the shitty-flash illuminated faces of him and Victoria are what he paused on.  
God, their faces were so bright . . . he felt like the flash was in his eyes. It stabbed at him like he was hung over. The pain spread, down through his skull, a sudden, splitting headache. He dropped the camera back down on the table to cradle his head in his hands.

* * *

His eyes snapped open to pelting cold, like icy needles all over his skin. But no, no, it was nothing but cold rain, winter rain almost. It was dark everywhere, as if the sun had set in an instant. An unrelenting wind howled all around him, and he was freezing before he had a moment to breathe.  
He stood far along a familiar path, leading up towards the city light house from the beach where Frank liked to chill out until the police told him he had to leave after 10pm.

Despite the rain, a single bright spot appeared in Nathan's vision, like a splotch of blue. It fluttered towards him, unfettered by the deluge despite being so small. Nathan quickly realized that it was, in fact, heading towards him, and he reached out his hand. Gracefully, the tiny butterfly settled on the edge of his fingers, and Nathan realized why it was unbothered by the rain. It was not entirely there. Its entire body was translucent, like a ghost - or at least, a Hollywood rendition of a ghost.  
Then, the butterfly took flight again, and began to fly along the path up the hill. Nathan would have stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets, but he found them filled with water, and he decided he preferred them out in the open, vulnerable though they were. He began to hike along the path after the butterfly. Several boulders tumbled past him from further up, but they fell off along a bend in the path before he turned it, conveniently saving his skin. A few seconds later, he head a loud crash, and continuing forward, he found a freshly-collapsed tree in his bath. He heaved himself over the obstacle and continued on after his fluttering guide.

It wasn't until he reached the top of the hill that he realized he was walking this path with another person, like the butterfly were following them up the path just as he was following it. Near the precipice of the hill to the left of the lighthouse, a dark figure stood, in sharp contrast to that which Nathan only now could see. A massive swirling storm, just off the coast of Arcadia. He continued forward a little, and realized that he could see the movement of the hurricane by the moment - as if it were just inch-by-inch, the torrent spun towards the coastal city. It took him a moment to comprehend the size of the storm, but as he compared the two - town and storm - for longer, he realized that they were quite similar. The town would be utterly consumed in the hurricane's onslaught.

The butterfly continued, unfazed by this situation. It continued to fly towards that dark figure on the other side of the hill, and Nathan followed quickly, dreading to be left alone in this storm. The figure continued to one of the most remote corners of the hill . . . and then, a bolt of lightning struck the top of the light house. Nathan stood and watched in horror as the structure began to collapse, which only grew as it crushed the path ahead of him, leaving him separated from the only other figure here.  
The butterfly did not seem to care about the intensity of all of this. It simply flew over the gap in the land.

Nathan swallowed, then raised his hand, and rewound. It was amazing the sorts of things that could become undone - in this case, how the very top of the lighthouse shot back from the air between the cliff and the sea, bringing the land it had destroyed with it, and reasserting itself back atop the lighthouse's body. As Nathan left the rewind, he heard the lightning again, but just continued forward, crossing the bridge of land that collapsed when the light house fell on it. He should have marveled at the power of that instant. But the butterfly still flew, flew forward until it landed on the shoulder of the figure, who held a newspaper in their hand.

"October 11? Is this . . . Friday?" The voice came quietly, but Nathan could hear it just fine despite the storm. It cut through everything else, as if it were spoken near his ear.  
The wind ripped the newspaper from the figure - who Nathan now recognized as wearing a dark, indistinct hoodie and soaked jeans - and Nathan took the last few steps forward, placing his hand over the butterfly to capture it, palm locking onto the shoulder of the small person, who turned around and-

Everything was bright, and Victoria jumped, almost ready to scream before she saw that it was just Nathan. Her hand clutched to her chest in the same instant nonetheless, and she stepped back against the bill board, shoes digging into a point on the face of a Rachel Amber poster she had just torn from its rightful place.  
"Oh, god, it's just you, Nathan. What's up? Are you all right?"

Nathan could feel the muscles of his face - how his eyes were wide in surprise or terror, but what he couldn't feel were his legs. A second later, his legs gave out, but he found his descent remarkably easy as Victoria stepped forward to support him in her arms. "I . . . I . . . what's going on?" Nathan asked, his whole body feeling chilled from the cold rain. But it wasn't rain falling on his body right now - it was snow.  
Victoria was quick to crouch down with him, and wrap Nathan up more tightly, beginning to drag her fingers through his hair comfortingly. "It's just snow, Nate. We're at school, and it's just snowing."

Nathan was shaking so bad. He hadn't been shaking no matter how cold it was. He didn't know why he was shaking. "I saw her, Tori. I saw Rachel. I think I saw her at the lighthouse. It was so dark."  
Victoria shook her head and squeezed her best friend. "No, Nate. It's just her posters. I promise. No one has seen her."

And Nathan could see it as she floated away - just another poster of Rachel in the dark room. The paper lifted once and fell, then fluttered its way down the steps towards the street.

"I see her everywhere," Nathan confessed.  
Nathan felt Victoria nod, chin grating along the top of his head. "I know."

He didn't know why he began to cry.


	5. The Girls' Dorm

Nathan had a plan and very little time in which to execute it. Luckily, that wasn't so much of a problem for him anymore.

Nathan was very skilled in more ways than he really got to express, as most of them did not really align with his family's interests. Sure, he was good at photography, but thanks to his actual investment in photography, he wasn't allowed to really express that publicly. But one key thing that his family had really helped instill into him was the value of and talent for threats. And that was his intention today, to display his talent.

The nice thing was that he wasn't going to have to struggle to get his art supplies up to the dorm. He had long ago managed to sneak in several colors worth of spray paint for graffiti, and nobody was going to question him walking around with a back pack, even if that backpack happened to contain a binder full of digitally and physically malformed photographs and a can of red spray paint. It was just a backpack after all.  
Nevertheless, almost as soon as he stepped outside, Nathan was met with his first obstacle, and it looked like shit. Graham stood near the corner of the boys' dorm, occasionally leaning out to peek up at something on the second floor. After a bit of a talk last night with Victoria about the shit with Caulfield, Nathan was quick to recognize that he and Graham had similar interests this morning. But Nathan needed a way to end that boy's spying without being clear what he was doing.

That shouldn't be hard. Nathan pushed the heavy aluminum door to the boys' dorm closed, and with the sound of it clicking shut, he called out unnecessarily loud: "Hey, pussy. Looking forward to moving into your new home once people realize what a bitch you are?" Nathan leaned over the railing of the steps, hanging over Warren just a few feet away.  
Graham wheeled around and took a step back, immediately into the open of the courtyard. "Shit, man, what's your problem? I don't know what's up with you and Max but you need to calm down, take a chill pill."

That drew a small chuckle out of Nathan, who just kept the casual stance at the landing of the dorms. "Oh, I did, and that's why you're here with a black eye and not a stain for Madsen to scrub out of the parking lot. If you're going to try and do shit, you may want to work on fighting for it instead of sucking dick for everything that gets in that bitch Caulfield's way." Finally, Nathan descended the steps and made his way to the other side of Graham, effectively boxing him in but giving him enough space to retreat towards the dorms, where he wouldn't be causing any issues. And Graham did exactly that, keeping his distance as if Nathan would lunge across the five to ten feet that separated them at any moment. Graham took care not to adjust his stance much as Nathan moved around him, but his eyes tracked Nathan at every step.

Graham shook his head, even if he'd already forfeited from moving. "I look out for my friends, Nathan, not just me. And I don't try and solve all my problems like a fucking Neanderthal, you know?"

Nathan had Graham where he wanted him, so he essentially stopped paying attention, instead pulling out his phone and completely dropping his gaze from the younger boy. "Whatthefuckever Graham, just stay the fuck out of my way or I'll start solving my fucking problems."

Nathan made sure he was no longer visible, having passed the corner of the building by enough, before he started the stop watch on his phone. Then, he simply continued to walk around the grounds until he came to the girls' dorm, and ascended the steps without hesitation, opening the door and closing it behind him.  
He didn't run into anybody on the first floor, and took a near-immediate right to hit the stairs to the second floor. As soon as he had, he hit the 'lap' button on his stop watch, then raised his hand up and pushed against the barriers of time. It was amazing, really, how easy it was - time felt as light as air once you knew how to touch it. He held the rewind until the second lap was equal in duration to the first, then hit 'lap' again.

As soon as he emerged on the second floor, he was met with a considerably greater reaction.  
Oh, great, it was some of the nosiest bitches on campus aside from Caulfield herself. One of which Nathan actually knew fairly well: Juliet Watson. The other one was just this weird girl from around who was fucking obsessed with drones and shit, and would never stop flying one of them around. Come to think of it, he was going to have to learn to avoid that thing if he was going to avoid getting caught teleporting around like this.

The one whose name he didn't really know spoke up first: "Whoah, hey, Nathan, what are you doing in here?"  
Nathan didn't respond - he just kept his eye on his phone and continued on down the hall, looking up occasionally to check room numbers.  
Then, Watson spoke up, "Um, Nathan? You know you're in the wrong dorm, right?"

But it didn't matter, because none of them actually moved to stop him. They just gave their mighty 'umms' and 'what the fuck?s' but words couldn't impede him any longer. They were powerless. He was Powerful. That's how it had always been, and that's how it would continue to be, more drastic now that it might be.

Nathan turned into the correct room without even looking up, hitting 'lap' on his phone and then rewinding. It was so convenient that he was unaffected by this strange effect, even if it meant that some stuff was still hard to get around - for instance, he couldn't just rewind his way out of a fight, because after he discovered upon returning to his dorm last night, he retained all the injuries he acquired in them. Graham might be a weakling, but that didn't mean falling to the ground repeatedly didn't hurt someone.  
When Nathan finally did look up, watching small details outside the window shift backwards for a good thirty seconds, hitting 'lap' again once the time returned to what it once was.

Nathan had just teleported, unseen, from the campus just outside of Graham's sight to inside of Caulfield's bedroom. And, oh, god, what a hipster-bullshit-filled bedroom it was. 'Keep calm' rug? Globe lanterns? A wall of photographs? A fucking plant in the corner? God, all she needed were three cacti on her window sill and she'd be perfect. Nathan was not going to have any problems fucking up this decor.  
Nathan set his backpack down at the base of her bed, pulling away her comforter to make room for his present. Then he retrieved the red spray paint and looked around for the best location to deliver his threat. And he didn't need to look for particularly long, because the photo wall pulled him in. First, it sat directly over her bed, making it nearly impossible to ignore. Second, she had clearly spent hours on these shots, not to mention likely hundreds of dollars in film. He may not have been able to threaten her right the first time, but she'd come around to something this personal. She'd probably be fucking crushed. She could go whine to Jefferson about the loss of her whole portfolio. He could volunteer to help her recover it. Fuck, honestly, Jefferson would probably love this plan if he were willing to hear it through, but neither Jefferson nor Dad were exactly ones to play things by ear.  
Nathan shook the spray can.

NOBODY  
MESSES WITH ME  
BITCH

Yeah, that ought to do it. _Fuck your selfies, Caulfield_ , Nathan thought, a shit-eating grin appearing on his face as he thought it. Quick wittedness might not be his strong suit, but Victoria could produce some great ones.

While the paint worked on drying, Nathan pulled out some pieces from his binder and laid them out, procuring a bit of tape from inside the backpack to attach Max Caulfield's head to a picnic platter, on which was originally served only a sandwich and a goat's head. Her eyes had been scratched out the night before, thanks to a little frustrated pin-scratching her picture from Victoria, and Nathan had decided to repurpose the head for this event.

Good, that should do it. Chloe, Caulfield, and Graham. They should all shutthefuckup real soon.

But there was one of the pictures. Nathan wasn't sure why that one in particular, but there was just one of the pictures. Like many on the wall, it was just a plain selfie taken sometime in the early morning. But her face just seemed right in that one. Nathan may not have picked up how to describe the _right_ faces yet, but from significant perusal of Jefferson's binders, he was pretty sure he could at least . . . feel it when he saw it. And he saw it here.  
Standing on her bed, Nathan reached up higher than the paint, near the corner of the photo wall, and tugged one of the taped photos down, inspecting it for a moment before sliding into his pocket.

Ugh, and that's when Nathan noticed David Madsen was hanging around outside the boys' dorm. That was going to create a problem.

Nathan hit 'lap' again, returned his binder and spray can to his backpack, and was out of the door in a flash, and just flat-out ignored all the calls and exclamations as he made his way through the hall, because, again, nobody made any effort to physically stop his retreat. Down the stairs, completely ignoring Taylor and Courtney who were also descending the steps, out of the girls dorm.  
"Hey, what the hell do you think you're doing!?" David Madsen called, and immediately began to pace towards Nathan, who just made a beeline for the 'Rachel owes me money' tree, and leaned against it, as if he were trying to hide from David.

Lap.  
Rewind. Back and back until the times matched.

Nathan could hear David's steps back up towards the boys' dorm and beyond, watched squirrels around the perimeter of the dorms wave their heads about, not noticing him at all, before crawling backwards through the bushes. It was honestly a trip visually, but when Nathan had to hold it for more than a few seconds, it got strenuous, so it was hard to admire it for its aesthetic value.

Nathan was winded when he exited the rewind, and actually had to lean against the tree to recover. He had never tried to use rewind so much, and to such a level. He'd either taken away short pieces of time while staying in a similar place, or a longer one associated with movement. But, if everything added up all right, he had disappeared just as he approached the tree, appeared in Caulfield's room, defaced it, then suddenly reappeared against the tree.  
Perfect.

Nathan let out a bit of a laugh, closing down his phone. But then, something dripped onto his phone screen from above, and he took a moment to try and wipe it away, but that only drew his attention to how viscous it was. He took a moment to inspect his own finger, and, in finding it stained red, it dawned on him that the fluid was blood. And then, another drip fell, and landed on his hand. He brought his hand up, just now realizing that he was bleeding from the nose.  
Just like yesterday by the billboard, Nathan felt his knees, his whole body suddenly weaken, and he lost the strength to hold himself up against the tree.

"Hey, Nathan!" called that voice. Madsen. It called, but Nathan just slumped over, collapsing onto the grass.

* * *

Everything was blurry when Nathan opened his eyes again. Just a body of blue and . . . a blonde girl maybe? Why was there so much blood around her? "Kate?" he asked, but then things began to come back into focus.

But it wasn't. It was just Madsen and Taylor. "What the hell are you on, kid?" Madsen practically growled in response, as Nathan pushed himself up to a seated position. He'd prefer to escape the situation entirely, but he didn't think he could stand just yet.  
Nathan needed an excuse. Quick. And he didn't exactly feel in an optimal excuse-making state. "I . . . ugh, fuck Madsen, nothing. I just haven't eaten anything for a while and I got a bit dizzy. And, shit, it's dry this time of year and I fell on my face, excuse a nosebleed." Nathan peeled off his jacket and wiped his face with his undershirt sleeve

"Uh huh," Madsen grunted, but didn't go any further just yet.  
"You okay, Nate?" Taylor inquired, several feet back on the concrete but leaning forward so she appeared over Madsen's shoulder.

Nathan shrugged, as much of an affirmative as he tended to give. "I've just got to get something for the bleed, I guess. I can get napkins from the cafeteria or something. I'm good." Neither of them seemed to believe him. "Seriously, I'm good now."

"Well, Mr. Prescott, I don't think I've got any choice but to take you to the nurse." Madsen reached out an arm that Nathan could support himself on, but Nathan just grabbed his coat and slowly stood, using the tree as support.  
It was just then that he realized his backpack was no longer on, but rather sitting next to him on the ground. It was completely zipped up, but still . . .  
Nathan grabbed it, and pulled it onto his back. "I'm good, thanks. Just shove off, all right?" He spat the words, but clearly stumbled as he stepped away from the tree, rendering them weak. Madsen stepped up beside him, although he did not reach out to support him at all.

"No can do, Mr. Prescott. I'll be seeing you there."

If Nathan had the capacity, he would have growled. But all he managed to get out was, "Whatthefuckever." It fell limp, and the two walked slowly side by side past the boys' dorm down towards the center of campus.

It wasn't until they were in the alleyway between the boys' dorm and the central campus, where Nathan carried out his deals and where Nathan had nearly encountered Caulfield yesterday, that anything about this changed. But when they did, Madsen sped up, turned, and planted himself in Nathan's path. Nathan could just step past him, but the gesture was clear, and Nathan didn't feel like he was in much of a state to argue further.  
"Well then, whatthefuck do you actually want, Madsen?"

Madsen crossed his arms over his chest, but stood quite close to Nathan, easily within touching distance, which was something that people hired at schools tended to explicitly know not to do. Nevertheless, Nathan did not take a step back. "I want to know what the hell happened yesterday in the parking lot between you and Maxine Caulfield, after I heard that a student might have a gun on campus. Because you sure as shit better have a good explanation, Nathan."

Nathan needed a few seconds for this one. Rewinding wasn't just going to get him out of this. He had no clever explanations. So he wasn't going to play this game. "Look, you've got a problem? Take it up with the school, or, shit, the cops. But I can't imagine either takes you very seriously, especially with that off-the-leash daughter you've got. So now that I'm clearly not bleeding anymore, and clearly can walk, why don't you get the fuck outta my face, huh?"

The two just stared at each other for what felt like a long, long moment. But, then, Madsen did take a step to the side, letting Nathan continue on, though it would bring him in great proximity to the head of security.  
Nathan didn't look at him as he walked past.

Madsen started talking again, louder, before Nathan rounded the corner. "I'm trying to help you, Nathan. But I'm not going to be able to do that so long as you play these games."  
Nathan ignored him. He just saluted Madsen with two fingers mockingly as he rounded the corner. "Whatthefuckever, dude."

 _Everyone's just trying to help, huh? Then maybe they should mind their own goddamn business, and help us all._

And there was someone in particular who needed to mind their own business, and that reminded Nathan. He pulled out his phone again, taking a moment to wipe the screen clean again with his sleeve, then . . . paused. He reached into his jacket, and retrieved a second phone, checking his contact list before typing a new message into the second phone.

 **Nathan:** Keep your mouth shut about everything. Or I'm coming for your ass. I know where you sleep.

Good. That should be enough.


	6. The Rain

Nathan had to admit that he was feeling pretty fucking good by the time he was back on campus for class, glad that AP had essentially been cancelled indefinitely. He managed to catch Frank just as he was about to leave the Two Whales diner and left rather well stocked, though only a small amount of what he picked up was actually for him. He'd picked up plenty for a personal supply sporatically throughout yesterday, as he and Frank had run into each other on three separate occasions . . . well, 'running into each other' would be one way to put it. In another way, Nathan had essentially been trying to balance coke and weed in his system since his weird vision of that storm, and had somehow been struggling to maintain a high since then. This time travel thing must really eat through cocaine or something.  
Still, stuff started to get weird through the full day of no sleep and too much stuff in Nathan's system, so Nathan decided to take a little breather around 11:15am in the form of diazepam, which should help keep his twitchiness down and let him get through the rest of the school day.

Still, there was something about weed and diazepam that left you feeling pretty good, if a little out of focus.

So, when Nathan pushed open the doors of Blackwell, he wasn't entirely sure how to handle coming immediately face to face with Kate Marsh. He wasn't prepared to be scary, nor really should he try to be. He just hoped she had forgotten his presence entirely from the night of the Vortex Club party. Sure, his involvement in her video couldn't look great, but if she remembered nothing, it didn't seem very likely that she'd recall anything about him. She slept more easily with GHB in her system than anyone else he'd ever met.  
So, as she walked towards him and him towards her, he wasn't sure what sort of face to put on. Intimidating? Charming? Nice? Evade her entirely?

Luckily, or perhaps not, he didn't have to settle for one, only managing a slight smile before she suddenly turned, as if she had forgotten something, and shot back the way she'd come. Shit. She was avoiding him. That was probably a bad sign. What could she possibly even remember? He had been nothing but nice towards her at the Vortex Club party, and there was no way she remembered anything from when she was in the studio - Frank had definitely made it in time before their next dose.

Nathan followed her down the hall towards Jefferson's room, glad to see that Victoria was standing just outside, leaning against the wall with her phone out, probably scrolling aggressively through We Heart It or something. Her eyes flicked up from the screen as Kate passed, and a pointed smirk followed quickly, but Kate gave her a wide berth before entering the class. Meanwhile, Nathan landed in next to Victoria silently, leaning on his shoulder against the wall.  
She changed tabs, but didn't drop her phone, just turning her head towards her friend. "Didn't see you this morning, Nate - you doing okay today?"  
Nathan nodded, passing a hand through his hair as if that would disguise his embarrassment. It wasn't so much that he had been vulnerable or afraid around Victoria - that was nothing new. It was just the remembering of vulnerability inside this place. He felt like, given the chance, this school would eat him alive. "Yeah, yeah, a lot better today. Just picked up some supplies for Thursday," he said, then kicked back off the wall to enter the classroom. It would help him keep an eye on Marsh and Caulfield.

As it turned out, that was unnecessary. Caulfield wasn't here yet, and Marsh was talking to Jefferson. Jefferson's eyes drifted from the little blonde and fell on Nathan and Victoria as they entered, and then he offered, "Maybe we should take about this outside, Kate."  
While Jefferson left to go play with his food, Nathan leaned up against Victoria's desk, but he was surprised to find that she instead went over to the table in the back center, placing her feet down on one of the seats.  
Nathan gave her a questioning look. "What?" she shrugged defensively. "It's Max's seat. I've heard she's been getting a little buddy-buddy with Taylor and I'm not going to let her play my little girl like that."

Nathan shrugged and took a position next to her, sitting on Max's table as well with his hands in his pockets, feeling lighter without the gun in his pocket and glad to ditch his backpack. He just felt like Victoria's approach to intimidation was a little . . . off. Not that it wasn't a tactic that worked, but because intimidation for her was either extremely direct with her size or extremely indirect with rumors and trash talk. Territoriality was a little different, but he didn't particularly care. A bit sad that this didn't give him a good avenue to check out the photo shoot going on behind them, but, oh well.  
"So, yeah, we should be all set Thursday - I'll have a chat with my dad to make sure there isn't any police shit going on down here. They can bust skaters Friday."

Victoria nodded, but she kept checking over her shoulder every ten seconds or so. "Mmhmm, okay, good. That'll be -" she looked back to Nathan, nodding again to make sure he saw the gesture, "- good."

There was a bit of an awkward pause while Victoria looked down at her phone, occasionally interrupted by glances back towards the photo shoot every few seconds. She normally was not so spacey - it was strange to see her distracted, and Nathan was not exactly sure how to respond. "So, uh," he began again, "I was thinking we should get a new barman for this party, because that last one seemed a bit like a creep."  
"Mmhmm."  
"And, I don't know, I feel like it would help everyone rock out a little, get into it if we got a cool guy - maybe someone a little younger, you know, or like a chick? I mean, nobody finds bargirls weird, they only add to a party."  
"Yeah."  
"I mean, we're just trying to sell a memorable time, right?"  
She was not listening.  
"So, I just thought maybe . . . well, I suppose if we just get people drunk enough it won't really matter, honestly. People won't notice much if I can time travel anyway so I don't even know what I'm worried about."

Victoria nodded a little, but then paused and turned her head a little towards Nathan. "Huh?" she asked.  
He didn't get much of a response out. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan noticed someone enter the room, and Victoria noticed it as well, turning a little extra until she could clearly notice who it was.  
And then she sort of giggled, but it was low and, well, weird. Then she asked in the same low, menacing? voice, "Do you think Max will be pissed we're sitting at her desk"

What the fuck? Yeah, of course she would be, isn't that the whole point? Why was she drawing attention to it now? What was up with Tori?  
Nathan hauled himself further up onto the desk as Caulfield approached, opening up his posture. "Better be quiet, Victoria - we've got a master snitch and liar here." He didn't want to make it loud, but he wanted anyone who was listening in to know what he had to say. Nobody was going to believe Max Caulfield - or, if they did privately, they wouldn't be doing it publicly.

Victoria leaned forward a little, eyes narrowing all the while as she asked, "Did you think we were best friends forever or something?"  
Something was seriously off about Caulfield, though. She kept her hands down by her sides but her head tilted while she talked, sarcastic and dismissive: "Not at all, Victoria."  
Nathan decided to spread his message a little further while Jefferson was out of the room, just a little louder. "Max is such an attention whore," he announced.

But she quite honestly didn't seem to give a fuck, and that left Nathan a little stunned. "You would know," was all she said as she took a step forward to retrieve her seat from him. "Can I sit down now?" she asked, placing a hand on her hip like an impatient mother counting to 'three'.  
Luckily, Victoria had Nathan's back - she lacked the context to be sufficiently surprised at the balls on this bitch. "Oh, please do," she said faux-sweetly. "Take a selfie of this moment," she said as she rounded Max, letting Nathan sit up while Max's eyes tracked her, so they temporarily had her between the two of them. Tiny girl with no friends in sight.  
But she didn't flinch. This girl needed to fucking flinch! "Yeah Max," Nathan said, leaning forward to draw her attention now. "So I won't forget you." She leaned backwards a little in response to his presence, but there was no unconscious retreat, no backward awkwardly into Victoria to humiliate herself.

She just kept her cool, and muttered, "assholes" as they retreated to the corner of the room.

"That fucking bitch," Nathan muttered so only Victoria would hear, not wanting anyone to recognize that her cool got to him a little. He always felt that he could bully and control the people here one way or another, but this absolute nobody just acted fucking impervious. Was it just some shit in her head? Was this the sort of autistic fuckery that Victoria ended her complaints with if she wanted to excuse herself for talking shit about Caulfield? Could she just legitimately not process his threats on some level, or did they just mean nothing to her? Whatever it was, it stripped him of his power in this place, and he did not like it one goddamn bit.  
"I know, right?" Victoria said, arms crossed, eyes still shifting away from Nathan occasionally to look back at Max. "She acts like she can do whatever she want, like the order around here means nothing." As she finished saying that, though, Victoria took another glance over at Max, and this time her stare lingered a little.

Nathan frowned. Victoria didn't sound pissed when she said that. She almost sounded like she admired it.  
Now Nathan turned to take an extra look at Max. Who could admire a scrawny, weird-looking bitch like that?

Beyond her, though, there was something else - a whole different scene out the window. Madsen sat behind the branches of a pale willow tree, a beefy camera in his hands as he snapped shots from the sidelines. Following his line of sight, Nathan noticed what looked like Kate Marsh heading across the campus.  
What was that fucker doing?

Then, there was another new entry to the classroom. Graham. Without so much as taking a glance at Nathan, he strolled up to Caulfield's desk and sat on the side of it with so much casual, flagrant disregard for Nathan's presence that it made his blood pressure rise.

"I saw Kate earlier and her eyes were puffy from crying."  
Caulfield nodded a bit to herself. Victoria was saying something but Nathan wasn't listening.  
"Kate has . . . a lot on her plate," Max replied softly.

The bell rang.  
Jefferson entered the classroom, taking a brief look at everyone.  
"I didn't know what to say and she didn't tell me anything," Graham said, probably saving his own ass on some level, with Jefferson and Nathan's eyes both on him.

Everyone moved to their seats.  
"Okay, I know you love me, but if you're not in this class, beat it."

Nathan tailed Graham out of the classroom as Jefferson began his little lecture. His eyes slid over to Jefferson as he did, a little curious about whatever exchange had just occurred between him and Marsh to make her cry - she hadn't been crying when Nathan saw her, so either this had happened much earlier and her face had cleared from it, or Jefferson had made her cry.  
Nathan raised his eyebrows as he made eye contact with Jefferson, but all he got was a stonewall of expression in response. Nothing. Beautiful.

Nathan heard giggling as he made his way out of the classroom, not in the mood to go to engineering right now.

* * *

You know what sounded a whole lot better than engineering? Fucking up whatever David Madsen was doing. Clearly he had taken an interest in Kate Marsh, and he wasn't the only forty year old man around here with an interest in her. She just seemed to be a magnet for all sorts of photography. Maybe Nathan could find out if Madsen's and his own were aligned. That was the sort of smart thinking that could get him a promotion at work. Or, you know, beat the fuck down by a security guard, but either way Nathan was going to come out on top from his confrontation.

Outside the school building, Nathan did not see Madsen anywhere - clearly, he'd moved on. Still, Nathan could tell where Kate was heading, which didn't make it difficult to deduce where he'd have to go to find David Madsen. Nathan made his way across campus towards the girls dorm, the rain beginning to spill over his jacket all the while, still largely kept off his face by his thick hair. Despite the rain, he could hardly say he was cold.

It wasn't until Zach Riggins zoomed by Nathan really recognized something was off. It was not a normal type of running. It was . . . frightened, almost. Uncharacteristic. Nathan paused while Riggins passed on the ramp between the main campus and the dorms, but then hurried his step towards the dorms afterwards. What was going on?  
And as Nathan turned the corner of the boys dorm, he did not immediately understand, because he had no context. There under the rain, there was only the empty park outside the girls dorm. A fully inflated football sat at the fork in the road, probably abandoned by Zach and someone else. Nathan began to make his way across the grass, figuring someone might have discovered his message to Max, when he realized someone's eyes were on him.

Then he looked up. And he saw her there.  
He did not stop walking until he was at the edge of the grass in front of the girl's dorm. And then, he just stood still, gazing up at something he barely comprehended.

Kate Marsh stood on the edge of the roof of the girls' dorm, and she was staring down at him. Not for a second did he fool himself that she didn't see him right back. Not for a second did he believe that she did not see him for exactly what he was. There, at that tremendous little distance, he discovered an intimacy in revulsion unlike anything he'd felt since . . .  
And they just stood there, as if they kept each other held in place with their gazes. Within maybe thirty seconds, other people had begun to turn the corner of the boys' dorm, but none of them . . . said anything. Some people, late for class, exited the girls dorm, but in following everyone else's gaze, they too turned and saw Kate standing there. A few of them went back inside the dorms, but only to retrieve more people to come outside.

Within two minutes, it was like the park outside the dorms was flooded with people, but Nathan and Kate's eye contact never seemed to break for more than a second at a time.

Then, there was somebody. Their voice was distorted, like half the air they were putting into talking was being lost in the formation of the words, but they called out, finally, finally. "Kate! Katie, what are you doing up there? Kate, come down - what are you doing? Kate?! Kate?"

Nathan and Kate both turned to look as a girl with dyed purple hair approached on the sidewalk, her hands held out to the sides of her like she were steadying herself. Alyssa. Victoria had mentioned her. Some introverted goth bitch. But she was the only thing that had pulled Kate out of her head. Or Nathan's head - wherever she was.

Kate's voice was more unsteady than Nathan had imagined it would be. "Alyssa - no, no, stay there, okay? I can't come down, I just can't. I-"

"BITCH FLIPPED OUT!" someone called loudly, and that shut Kate up immediately. You could see her jaw roll, as if someone had struck her, and she began to look out, ahead, away from the body of students and into the forest.

"No - Katie! Katie, what are you doing, why? What's going on . . ." Alyssa's voice seemed to break and broke into something incoherant. Graham appeared, and pulled her into his arms, and she began to fragment. That response . . . it was so much more different than everyone else's. Fascination. Shock. Horror. There was a range of emotion everywhere, but nobody else really seemed to be treating it like Marsh would actually do it. She wouldn't, would she? This was just some suicidal teenage girl bullshit.

But Alyssa had seen what they all hadn't. And Nathan saw it too, for just a moment. Kate held her arms out to her side, and she -  
She turned around suddenly.

David Madsen rushed passed Nathan, but Nathan barely even noticed, just trying to see what was going on. Where had he been this whole time?

She was talking to someone, and everyone just froze. Kate's arms stayed by her side, and her head bobbed slightly, her hands fidgeted as the rain poured down on her, and she was talking to someone. Nobody so much as wanted to breathe, and Nathan could barely bring himself to breathe. He couldn't hear anything but the rain pouring and pouring and he could feel it now, fuck his hair and his jacket and whateverthefuck else, he could feel the rain, and he was cold and numb everywhere.

Finally, there was something they could hear: "No! Nobody cares about me, nobody..."

They continued talking, talking, but a sharp edge of panic was setting in, like a needle had been jammed into Nathan's pulmonary artery and everything was leaking out. Everything was so quiet, he barely even processed it when Kate turned, waving her hand almost dismissively behind her.  
And then she just fell.

Nathan's hand shot out, but it was like he had wrapped his hand around an electric fence, as pain shot through his entire body and he recoiled back to try and escape the pain.  
"No! Kate!"  
He never heard anything like the sound of her body cracking on the pavement.

His eyes were still fixed up on the roof at first. His hand outstretched, as if he could grasp the palm of the person up there. Caulfield.  
They sat like reflected images across the axis of a dead body.

He let his eyes fall. Her arm was outstretched in front of her, like she was trying to crawl her way to a pillow while too drunk to continue. Blood already oozed from her mouth, or her face, or something there - it was all too buried against the concrete to really say.  
It was all so familiar to him, how her body was laid out over the concrete. Where had he seen her like that?

Ah, yeah. That photo. Jefferson had liked that one.

Nathan let his hand fall. There was screaming everywhere. Caulfield's hands came over her mouth, as if to hold back a scream of her own.

It seemed like the only person who wasn't screaming was the girl sitting on the steps of the girls dorm, looking out at the body as its blood tried to find cracks to disappear in. Her eyes met Nathan's as blood began to drip down his face.

"Fuck you," she said.


	7. The Aftermath

It was about 5pm and the crack team of lapdogs had been arranged, though Madsen was effectively made to sit in the corner while the bitch with a tighter leash played his role. Clockwise, they were Madsen, Berry, Nathan, Caulfield, Jefferson, and Wells. Wells stood with his back turned to everyone, probably looking for the words to say to forget his involvement in what had happened. But there were no words for that. This was a meeting of the guilty, thieves of lives, and it was time to see whose hands would be cut off. Marsh had been a lot less of a problem before she was dead. Everyone dragged you down when they died.

"Now, I know this isn't pleasant for any of us," Wells began as he turned towards everyone. His face was a stack of hard lines as always, but as his eyes began to dance around to everyone, Nathan knew he hadn't settled on who to blame just yet. "But we have to go over what happened before miss Marsh . . ." his eyes fell down to his desk, where a small mess of recent emails lay, "did what she did."  
He barely looked up as he continued, "Officer Berry will be taking notes for the official police inquiry." And then, with a glance over at Caulfield, he added, "I'm sure you'll give him your full cooperation."

Nathan's blood might have turned cold if he hadn't already expected this bullshit. The principal was going to try and pass this all off as the judgement of some little girl? It was smart, maybe, but it was pussyshit too.  
"Such a tragedy," Wells continued in his self-concerned monologue, "but there must be a reason for everything."

The principal turned again towards his window again, and when he began again, Nathan understood why.  
"We need to find out why Kate Marsh would be driven to such desperate action." Nathan lightly began to tap his foot but kept his hands folded and his eyes straight. The monologue continued, "As principal of Blackwell academy, I take my duties seriously. I take the well-being of every student more seriously."  
Madsen's head rose from his sulking chest almost as if to contradict Wells, but the man simply continued, "What happened today should never happen in a hall of wisdom and knowledge."

The first on the chopping block, it seemed, was the one closest to protest. "Mr. Madsen, as our head of security here, those roof doors should always be locked. That's just standard operating procedure. They were not. And that indeed is your responsibility."  
What weak shit. Nathan knew any attempt to shovel this onto that incompetent ass would be a pathetic excuse. It's how he knew it was the most likely outcome here - nobody would care that much if the paranoid head of security got dropped.  
Nathan's foot shook harder. Caulfield glanced down at it briefly, but when she looked up at Nathan, all she found were slitted eyes. She decided to follow Wells's eyes over to Jefferson instead.

"Mr. Jefferson, I know you can't be expected to know what your students are going through-" a grin cracked out on Nathan's face, suspiciously followed by Madsen. However, after a glance from Berry, he knocked it off, and Nathan was quick to follow - "but Kate has assisted you in class, so you should have known something was amiss."

It took all of Nathan's will just to hold back laughter as Wells turned to him. This conference, this speech was as much a sham as the power he was wielding right now. Jefferson should have known something was amiss? The doors should have remained locked? _No shit_. And yet, what surprise was it that things fell into place that they did? Everyone in this room would have preferred Kate be alive, but from where Nathan was standing, that was mostly out of convenience. It's piles of paperwork and handfuls of charades like this just to get her corpse into a morgue.

Nathan was vaguely aware he was being spoken to: "Mr. Prescott, since you are responsible for the Vortex Club parties . . . and since Miss Marsh did attend you last party, you'll have to answer some more questions."  
Nathan leaned forward a little, waiting to toss out whatever bullshit it took for this to go away as the principal sat down.

However, when the principal pulled his chair forward, he did not direct his attention to Nathan at all. Instead, he turned straight to Caulfield and began, "Miss Caulfield, why exactly were you on the roof with Kate Marsh?" He folded his hands and leaned forward, much in mirror to Nathan himself, so Nathan backed off a little. Clearly he was being shut out for the moment.

 _Fine,_ Nathan thought. _He can do whatever the fuck he wants until my dad shows up._

"Did she tell you her plan? Or anything at all? Please, tell us everything."

The little mauve-clad girl fumbled with her hands for a few seconds, staring somewhere between the desk and her legs. Her mouth was open, but her eyes simply stared into nothing, and Nathan could read nothing from her. Then, all at once, she unfolded her hands, looked up, and, "All I know is that Kate was at a party and Nathan dosed her."

Nathan's face immediately pinched, and his focus on Caulfield went from peripheral to a direct stare, but she just kept her eyes forward, engaging Wells and bypassing the wall of stares to her right. Only Jefferson's eyes immediately seemed to darken.  
For Nathan, it was like the air was pulled from the room.

"She got wasted and kissed some guys on a viral video without a clue."

God. Victoria had underestimated this girl so unbelievably much. Nathan had too. She did not have one ounce of fear in that tiny body, did she?

Nathan's voice was high, and there wasn't enough air behind it. "I dosed her?" he asked, mocking, pointing to himself as he leaned over at Max. "Without a clue? Have you seen the video?" Jefferson shot him a quick warning shot of a glance, though, and Nathan dropped himself back in his seat, and just waved Max off, "Whatever."  
Instead, he turned forward to Wells, and presented an easy out, "Kate was loaded and playing the field-"  
" - You're a liar," Max cut in, and the interruption seared under Nathan's skin.  
She finally turned straight towards him and followed up, "You told Kate you took her to the emergency room!"

Fuck! How much had she remembered? How many people had she told before she shut herself up?

"I told her I was going to take her to the ER," Nathan retorted, almost casually. He tried to wave it all off again, drop doubt into Max's mind, "She sobered up eventually."  
Max wasn't backing down. She was practically yelling now, "Bullshit! Something happened to her, and you know it."

She wouldn't say that if she had a shred of proof. Nathan waved her off again.  
There was a new tautness to Madsen's gaze, and the man wasn't moving a muscle.

Max leaned out of her chair towards Nathan, pushing into his space much like . . . much like he'd done to her. "How about we talk about you waving a gun in the girls' bathroom-"

Oh, good, something he was covered on; "Hey, that's total slander! I could sue you and this school so fast!"  
This threat was not lost on Principal Wells, who gained a similar expression to David Madsen as he focused on Nathan.  
Nathan turned forward, challenging the weakest threat here to back down, "I already have a personal lawyer."

To Nathan's amazement, though, Wells was quick to respond: "Careful, Mr. Prescott." His tone was sharp, cautionary. "I have been told of this alleged gun incident. And I have to admit that the video in question was sent to me by multiple sources."  
Madsen spoke up, finally lifting his gaze from Nathan across the room to Jefferson, who had managed to keep his distraught expression for the proceedings going the entire time. "Including me," he interjected, but was promptly ignored by everyone else.

Wells pulled himself even further up on his desk, allowing his torso to loom over the thing. His eyes remained focused somewhere neutral on his desk. "And since Mr. Prescott does appear prominently in the video," finally, his eyes shifted right towards Nathan - and Nathan knew he was fucked, " _and_ was responsible for the party, I have no choice but suspend him until further notice."

Nathan took a second to grip his chair arm to hold him in place . . . until he remembered how little that would matter. His dad was too busy to give him any more shit than he'd already give him over the phone.  
"Whatever," Nathan dismissed, throwing his hands up briefly in mock surrender. "See you in court."

Jefferson cleared his throat before finally speaking, apparently not having had to provide anything in his defense, and not having bothered to help Nathan in any way (the fucker was goddamn in love with this Max chick by now, probably). "Excuse me," he interrupted politely, perfectly politely, "I think Max and Nathan need a break before we grill them further. A friend and fellow student is dead - " Nathan waved his hand at the old news " - and they don't need this forum right now."

Plus, they probably wanted time to give Nathan some more helpful coaching before this got any further. Berry may be bought, but he'd jump at a chance to get some leverage over the Prescotts. "Yes," Nathan agreed, "I'm kind of devastated right now. I'd like to be with my family."

Wells nodded and picked up a sheet of paper he had been making some notes on, standing to place it in front of Max. "All right, Miss Caulfield, Please sign here to confirm what you've told us. I'll continue this investigation from there."

Those notes were as far as this would go. But with the way Madsen was watching Nathan, maybe that was enough . . .

There was a long moment of silence while she deliberately read over what the principal had written down, followed by an almost audible collective release when she finally picked up the pen and signed her name. Her hand was trembling.

The principal pushed himself back out of his chair. "Well, I think we know less now than when we started." He gave a glance over to Officer Berry, just enough to acknowledge his presence, and added, "We'll be assisting the police with further inquiries."

Max's head turned sharply over to Nathan and her mouth opened, but nothing came out. He sat there for a second watching her, but then she relaxed back a bit, silent.

"I know this has been a stressful day," Wells continued, ". . . I wish I had the power to change it all for the better; so thank you for coming in."

Madsen turned and walked towards the door. Nathan stood and shot Jefferson a pissed glance, letting him sail down this river by himself. Jefferson only gave him a lazy, expectant raise of the eyebrows before Nathan turned for the door himself.

 _We'd all like that power,_ Nathan thought. _But it looks like we can all go fuck ourselves._

Nathan expected to walk straight out, but quickly found himself cornered in the hallway by Madsen. Max shot them her first nervous glance of the evening as she passed, but she continued on her way out of the building first.

Nathan was expecting some shit. He didn't get it.  
"Look, Nathan - Mr. Prescott. I know this isn't really the time, but I'll have your truck fixed by tomorrow. I'll have it out in the parking lot by the time you kids are out at lunch."

Nathan was bewildered, and only blinked dumbly for a sec. It took him a little while to build his sarcastic tone back up, "Ah . . . uh, okay. Great. Thanks, I guess."

Madsen nodded curtly, and his parting words sounded like gravel, "No problem." And then, he walked off.

* * *

The sun had almost begun to cower behind the horizon by the time that Nathan made it back to the dorms. He had just made it to the steps of the boys dorm when he hesitated, looking around the corner, up at the spot she'd stared him down from. She wasn't there anymore. He looked at the steps to that dorm. There was no one there, either.  
He didn't think he'd ever seen the park here so deserted while the light was still out. Everyone feared ghosts.  
They didn't even know what ghosts were like.

When he approached the steps of the girls' dorm, he saw that he was not entirely correct. Someone had placed a photograph of Kate on the first step. It sat alone.  
He gave it a wide berth and entered.

The halls were empty inside. The stairwell up to the second floor was similarly deserted. Nathan did not hear music blaring out of open doors or through walls meant to contain it. He could hear shuffling, he could hear video games, and he could hear himself breathing, but that was just the sounds over the pervading quiet.

On the second floor, yellow tape covered Kate's door. Nathan tried not to look.

He opened the door of Victoria's room, and just let the door swing shut behind him ever so slowly.  
Victoria looked up at him. Her makeup was smudged all over her face and it stained the creases of her hands. She had somehow managed to keep all of her tears off of her clothes, though, as she could not afford to ruin any more of them.

She almost sounded like she was choking, "You're here," she said.  
"Yeah," he replied and approached the bed.  
She scooted over to accommodate him as he sat down on the bed beside her. They both left their hands on their legs, tightly bound.

Her second attempt at talking went a little better. "So, ah, how'd it go with the principal? What did they want you for?"  
He shook his head gently, eyes down at the floor. He was quieter than he had been all day; "It was just some bullshit, you know how it is."  
She nodded in agreement, but said nothing.

Nathan sighed, deflating and hunching over, crossing his hands at the wrist. "And I got suspended. Indefinitely. I think I'm . . . fucked."  
"What?" she questioned, quickly and much louder. Then, finally, she stopped looking ahead and turned towards Nathan, placing a hand on his upper arm. "What happened? How can they suspend you?"

He still did not look up at her, didn't move in response to her touch. He wasn't sure how honest he could be. So he'd just have to go with the version that was probably going to be everywhere real soon. "I . . . the principal saw the video of Kate. He saw me in it, and blamed me. I'm his scapegoat."  
Victoria immediately started to defend him, "Well, that's fucking bullsh-"  
But Nathan shook his head as if he'd just remembered something, "Well, no, not really. That girl who was up there with Kate? Max or whatever? _She_ said it was my fault." He peered over at Victoria with an expectant look, waiting for her to make her own conclusions.

She said the name softly, "Max . . .?" and then it began to click for her. Her lips pursed into a fine line. "Oh, that bitch," she finally added with far more venom than Nathan had ever heard. "She played me." And then, "It's like she totally has it out for you. That fire alarm bullshit, now this? This seems like some bullshit collusion between her and the principal to get you kicked out - she does some weird, fucked up shit, and you get blamed. Fuck that. Fuck her."

Nathan's mouthed opened as he prepared to protest. That wasn't it. That wasn't her. He knew that.  
But it's not what he said.  
He finally looked up at Victoria, eyebrows raised, tone sardonic, "There's more, too. Yesterday, I went up to her to find out if she knew why I'd be blamed, right? And her friends ganged up on me - one of them nearly hit me with her car. She's a fucking psycho cunt, I swear."  
Victoria stared at him, unblinking for a second.  
He remembered. "Oh, right, yeah, you hate that word. Yeah, sorry."

Victoria sighed, letting go of Nathan's arm, and lay down on her bed. The improvement to lighting on her face only highlighted the smears in her makeup from tears and rubbing with her hands.  
"This is all bullshit," she muttered, barely audible.  
Nathan lay down as well, but stayed quiet, recognizing her quiet look at the ceiling as a cue that it was her time to talk.

"They," she paused very quickly, breathing in, then out, "they already taped up her door, you know? Like a crime scene."  
Nathan nodded that he'd noticed.  
"And Taylor's like, losing it, you know? She was totally in shock, and then that girl from my photography class - you know, the one with the purple hair? - she . . . she came up to her and she called her a bitch and she just slapped her. This fucking girl that never talks slapped Taylor across the face and she just - she didn't say anything. When I walked her back to her dorm, she could barely breathe. Courtney's mom picked them both up for a bit, but . . ."

Nathan scooted closer to Victoria, and she lifted up her head, letting him get an arm beneath her shoulders. She rolled a little, placing her head on his shoulder and chest with a hand sitting there on the center of his chest. Her voice was even quieter now, there was so little breath behind it. "And . . . I think I might know what happened to her."  
"Taylor?" Nathan asked, confused.  
"No, Kate."

Nathan's breath caught for a second, and her name hung there in the quiet. Could she have figured it out? Had she seen right through him? When he ran from her body, ran from the steps, did she know? Did she understand?  
"What?" he asked.

"I . . ." she started slowly, but quickly picking up pace, "I saw her Friday, you know, after I posted the video. She was in the showers when I got there, which was weird, 'cause I got up so late. But she came out while I was doing my makeup, and her arms were all scratched up, and her eyes were bloodshot - way worse than your normal hangover. And her wrists . . . there were thick pink lines on them, like they'd be taped or tied or something."

 _Fuck you_ , Nathan heard, like a whisper in his ear.

He didn't say anything in response.  
"What if she was raped?"

Nathan shook his head rather vigorously and replied immediately, "No, no way."  
"But how can we be sure?" Victoria almost sounded like she was pleading. "I got so wasted that night, I don't even remember shooting the video. Taylor was fucked up too, and you know she blacks out easy. Those assholes on the football team wouldn't say anything - you know how sports teams are. It was probably one of them who-"  
"No, Tori, no." She cut off as he began. "Nobody did anything. She got wasted like the rest of us. She partied like the rest of us, like a hypocrite, and she couldn't take that she liked it, but that's not on us, or anyone else there."  
"But what if-" Victoria's head tilted up, as if she could look Nathan in the eyes.  
"No," Nathan declared.

He hated the sound of his voice in that one word. It sounded so familiar. It sounded like his dad.  
And it had about the same effect - silence from Victoria.

Nathan felt sick, but that might have been from his evaporated high. He wasn't sure when he had last eaten.

Rapidly, the light filtering in through the window began to decline. Nathan ignored it at first, but then he found Victoria's room plunged into unexpected darkness.  
"What the . . .?" he asked, sitting up.

Victoria pulled herself off Nathan as she sat up, and turned to look where he did at the window. She seemed even more surprised than he did, and stood up off the bed. He was just a step behind as she pulled the blinds open to look outside, finding the park outside dark. The lights weren't even off yet, leaving the outside eerily quiet and dark, cold. She looked up at the sky, and found few clouds, despite the rain earlier.

"It's an eclipse," she commented, still muted. "How ominous . . ."  
She held one of her arms close to her chest, as if it could protect her.  
Nathan lay a hand on her shoulder, tugging slightly to take her away from the window. After a few seconds, she responded, taking a step back.  
"Tori, we need to do something. Anything. I can't take this."

She finally turned around, concern written all over her face. "What do you have in mind?"  
Nathan remembered the queasiness in his stomach, felt an ache everywhere. "Let's . . . let's get some pizza, let's get some beer, and fill the parts of us that feel with food. Okay?"  
Victoria nodded slowly. "Yeah, okay. Make sure it's vegetarian, though."  
Nathan nodded in response, "Yeah, totally."

Victoria nodded, more to herself now, and took a second to look at herself in a mirror next to her laptop. "Yeah, just, let me fix this a little, and let me check on Taylor before we go. I'll see you in a few minutes, okay?"  
"Yeah."  
She pressed a kiss to his forehead, and they parted in the hallway in front of Taylor's room.


	8. The Rosary

Nathan had the foresight to return to his room and grab his bag, although he switched out his binder of mutilated photos and tape for some additional spray paint cans. He figured that, now that he could reverse time, he and Victoria could essentially never be caught, so it barely mattered that he was already on suspension. All they had to do was move around frequently enough that he wouldn't have to reverse further than he was able to. He ran a brief experiment to make sure that his powers were back once he was in his room, rewinding about thirty seconds so that he never appeared anywhere in the boys' dorm. Kate Marsh may have been friendless, but if Max started getting it out that Nathan was connected . . .

Nathan crept his way back to the exit of the dorms, and was glad to meet no one on the way.

* * *

Once they had their pizza and beer, Nathan and Victoria sat with their legs draped over the edge of the planter bordering the school side of the parking lot. The pizza box sat between them and several beers sat in the planter, discarded or still waiting to be consumed.  
 **CARS = DEATH** , cried the planter.

They decided that they needed some easier topics. Nathan started, "So, did you hear back yet from that, like, gallery place you were scoping out?" He meant it entirely casually, not even looking up as he curled the pizza to fit into his mouth.  
What he got was a sigh in response, and he turned to look at Victoria with pizza still in his mouth. Victoria didn't respond further for a few seconds, instead tapping her heel against the planter's wall.

"Yeah," she said, barely audible. Then, louder, "But they said no."  
Once he'd gotten enough chewing done to manage a facial expression and answer, he said, "Aw, shit Tori, that sucks. What'd they say?"

She just shook her head, "Nothing. I mean, I just didn't cut it." There was a pause, then, as she lifted a slice of pizza to her mouth, but she stopped before actually biting, and added almost as an aside, "Mom's going to be so pissed. I told her this was like, a sure thing."  
Nathan took a bite, munching to his thoughts. This was one area where there was very little he could do for Victoria - mediating things between her and her parents. Nathan was no expert in parent communication to begin with, and it didn't help that the Chase parents had little but disdain for the Prescotts, so much so that they'd discouraged Victoria from being in the Vortex Club and from spending time with Nathan at all. But maybe he could help with the photography problem? "Maybe you and I could look over your portfolio? I know I'm not really on your level but it might be good to have another eye-"

Victoria shook her head again, pretty vigorously to cut him off. "No, no, don't worry about it. I'm just really banking on this Everyday Heroes thing in class, but like everyone in each of Mr. Jefferson's classes is entering. Except, _big surprise_ , Maxine Caulfield," she gave a brief sound of disgust to show what she thought of that. "Too busy dicking around with your life to take a shot at a career-starting opportunity. Bitch." She took a bite of her pizza.  
"You sure?" Nathan asked, eyebrows raised, displaying sincerity. "I mean, even when you win, aren't people going to want a whole portfolio to vet you for other exhibits and stuff?"

She smiled a little at his use of 'when', but took another bite before responding. "Actually, yes - that's why I want to have a talk with Mark about my portfolio, make sure it's all nice and ready if I have to go down Friday."  
Nathan lay on his side as well as he could, doing his best to seem casual. He hadn't really enjoyed being around Jefferson lately - he'd been in a bad mood ever since the fuck-up with the blue-haired girl. He hoped Jefferson didn't take his frustration out on his other students. "Don't you think that might be kinda . . . cocky? I mean, you know, asking about your victory portfolio before he's announced a winner?"

A small, pinched smile crept up on Victoria's mouth. "Oh, I'm very confident he'll be willing to help. Plus, that's basically his job - he may act like a teacher, but he's really more of a career-start adviser. Mark is not an academic, he's a professional."  
 _Yeah, he's definitely not a teacher, that's for sure. Not for you._

Once they were nearing the end of their pizza, Nathan said, licking his fingers and rubbing them on the box, "Come on, let's go fuck with the campus a bit. I brought paint, and security's a bit busy shitting itself to do anything about it."

"God yes," Victoria replied, closing the box of pizza and standing up on the planter. "I need some casual chaos to keep me out of this funk. Let's do it."

* * *

As cheap as it was, Victoria and Nathan were both fans of tagging stuff as straightforwardly as possible. Victoria was just finishing a small tag of nothing but smooth lettering - when she finished, Nathan handed her a rag to wipe up the corners to keep it looking rounded, but precise.

She stepped back from it when it was complete. "And here we have a noir belle, the likes of which Jefferson has never achieved."  
It was simple, and pretty much just dickish. The bold lettering proclaimed: **"Victoria Chase Rulez!"** , like she had just discovered icanhazcheeseburger last week.

Nathan looked a bit skeptical, but his lips curled at her mock pride, her upright posture and showy gesturing at the little vandalism. "Well, I'm sure glad we decided to deface the property of the mighty motherfucking otters for that."

She gave a smirk, holding the can in an otherwise limp hand. "Yeah, well, me too."

* * *

They were both in a pretty giggly mood by the time they sat across from each other in Grant's science lab, having just finished off the weed that Nathan brought in his pack. It turned out there were not a lot of things that they could tag without getting into some pretty serious shit, and Victoria actually had some stake in staying in Blackwell.

Victoria decided to shoot for a topic that they could usually joke about after a few minutes. This was not one of those cases where they would.  
"So, why's your dad been riding you so hard lately? You haven't been coming out with Haydee and me recently."

He sighed, shaking his head. He'd really prefer not to think about it right now, when he was having a good time. "I've just . . ." he started, trying to find the right way to be honest and utterly deceptive at the same time, "I've been messing up a lot. A lot, lately. And, no surprise, he doesn't think I'm going to turn out to be shit. And I've done everything he's ever asked but it isn't worth a flying fuck to him."

Nathan normally laughed that very thing off. But, while he hadn't stopped to check his e-mails or texts or anything yet since this morning, he knew he'd be chest-deep in shit as soon as his father got ahold of him. Nathan couldn't keep his foot from shaking, and his mouth pressed into a point.  
Victoria reached across the table, taking Nathan's hand. "Look," she said, "your father is an asshole. But you've been a great son, and you've loved him even though he's been such an ass. He has no legitimate reason to complain. The only reason you've even been having trouble is because people are trying to turn you into a target. The principal, Max, whoever. That's all he can see, and it's his fault that he holds out on getting you help for it. None of that's on you."

Nathan leaned forward, resting his head in his free hand. Victoria . . . she understood the isolation, but there was more inside Nathan that she couldn't understand. She could not feel what was inside him. She could not feel his hunger, his gluttony. She wanted to control everything. She needed to. He needed to touch it. But every time he reached out his hand, he felt a slap, or a knife. Everything hurt to touch.

"No . . . he's an asshole, but he's right. I've been fucking up for weeks."  
Victoria's mouth became a flat line.  
Nathan continued, exasperated, "I'm just so sick of people trying to control me. I feel like I'm caged in my life - the principal, my dad, everyone, everyone who expects me to fail, and everyone who expects me to succeed. I can't manage the Foundation - I can't be part of his legacy. I like . . . photography, I like painting, I like speed, shit. But I'm not organized. I can't be like them."

Victoria caught the word, and her head tilted curiously. "Them? Who?"  
Nathan felt a brief spike of panic, and he took a moment to focus, to think, think past all of the spite, past all of the deleted photos of the girls, past every e-mail and text message. He closed his eyes, rubbing his temples with his fingers. "Fuck, anyone. My dad, my grand-dad . . . anyone I'm supposed to be."

Victoria squeezed his hand. "You don't have to be. Not anything for them. You're Nathan Prescott, you're my . . . best friend. You're not their legacy."

She was wrong. Whatever Nathan was, whatever he became, he was their legacy.  
And he was a waste.  
He could hear that word like a hiss in his ear, like Dad was sitting in the next chair.  
 _Waste._

Nathan looked over his shoulder, staring at the skeleton in the corner of the room. After a few seconds, he looked back at Victoria, and a smile sat on his face now. "Huh-holy shit, I have a great idea for a shot. Come over here."

He stood up from his stool, and reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He ejected one and fit it into the jawbone of the skeleton. Then, he took a second one and put it in his mouth, lighting his own a moment later. "It's fucking Augustus Waters." He reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone for a picture, while Victoria giggled.

"Well, while you get your ironic death fetish bullshit out, I'm going to go check on Mr. Jefferson's room - see if I can't get a sneak peek of my competition for Thursday."  
He turned on the flash and started snapping shots. "All right, I'll be here."

While he was examining the shots he had taken, though, Nathan heard a distant sound from down the hallway. He looked out the door of the science room, but heard no motion from inside - it didn't look like Victoria heard it from where she was.  
Nathan stuttered time back a few seconds, more to make sure that his power was working than anything. He heard the sound again, and concluded that it was the door to enter the building.

Nathan put his phone away, and just held his cigarette between his fingers as he crept down the hallway, fingers twitching as he prepared to rewind at the first sign of whoever entered. Probably just Samuel.  
No, not Samuel. Samuel's footsteps were loud. Nathan couldn't even hear the steps of whoever was inside. He didn't hear them at all until they rounded the corner, and Nathan found himself standing ten feet down from Jefferson. Jefferson stopped immediately, not quite able to see the intruder, just able to see their form.

Nathan stood upright, and inhaled from his cigarette.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing in here, Nathan?"  
Nathan exhaled slowly, letting smoke fill the space between them. "Relaxing after a long day of covering your ass, actually. What are you doing here?"  
When Jefferson took a few more steps forward, Nathan noticed that he was holding a camera supplies box and a roll of duct tape in his hands. That was a weird sight for school. "Are you trying your absolute hardest to get expelled? Did you try fucking up a little and think, 'well, maybe this is my calling, why don't I just go all in, I'm young?' We do _not_ need this right now."

Nathan took another drag and said nothing.

Jefferson took a deep, unsteady breath, clearly trying to keep his temper under control. "I'm here to make sure we have better access to supplies, Nathan, so we're less vulnerable to your sloppiness. I think we need to start you off on a lower level of responsibility if you're ever going to-"  
Jefferson began to walk past Nathan, but Nathan lowered his cigarette, took a step back, and waved his hands, "No, man, I've got this. Everything that went down with Kate - that was a fluke. Frank sold us some bad shit but I'm doing him some favors, making sure we're getting the best of the best, all right? Nothing like this is ever going to happen again."

Jefferson raised his hand up, like he was going to jab a finger against Nathan's chest. But, as he did so, his fury seemed to slip away, and slowly, very carefully, he lowered a hand onto Nathan's shoulder. Nathan did not flinch.  
"Good. I'm glad to hear it." Jefferson shook his head while keeping his eyes on Nathan, "No more mistakes, you understand? We need smooth sailing from he-"

They both heard it. A dragging sound - the sound of a drawer being pulled open.  
Jefferson's voice became hushed. "Is there someone - with - you?"

Jefferson did not wait for an answer. Instead, he walked right past Nathan, and Nathan just stared for a second as he made his way to his classroom door.  
Nathan followed his instincts.  
He made his way for the door without looking back.

"Oh, hey there Mr. Jefferson!" Victoria sounded positively delighted at having been caught.

* * *

Nathan was perfectly content to walk down the steps, to put as much distance between him and Mr. Jefferson as possible. With a cursory glance, he did not spot anyone out in the quad, so he headed back towards the dorms, flicking what little remained of his cigarette into the fountain as he passed.

He had nearly made it to the ramp when he heard someone behind him, and began to turn around.  
"Don't turn around, fuckhole."  
Of course, Nathan ignored the vast majority of people who called him fuckhole, so he continued his turn - until he saw that it was the blue-haired chick, and that she had a gun held out in front of her.

"Holy - fuck - jeeze," Nathan said, turning around again to comply. His hand twitched as he prepared to rewind, but he wasn't sure that he could rewind a bullet. He thought it best not to test it.  
Suddenly, he could feel the barrel of the gun pressing into his back through his jacket, and he raised his hands behind his head, like he was being arrested. "Don't move," she said, although Nathan was already pretty frozen.

"What the fuck do you want?" he all but spat, and was rewarded with a nudge of the barrel. She was not being gentle with her firearm. She shoved it against him like he should be thankful for it. He was frozen, except for the glance he tried to get of exactly where she was standing behind him.  
"I hear you like kidnapping and raping girls, huh," she said, keeping her distance except for her gun. "Weird, right? Who would have thought?"

Nathan's reply came through gritted teeth, "Look, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, all right?"  
"Really?" It was weird hearing her when she had the gun this time. She was so small and afraid when the gun was against her, and so sharp and cutting when she'd used it to rescue Max. But now, she just sounded sarcastic. Sarcastic and pissed. "Because, the way I heard it, you drugged a girl at a bar . . . wait, no, it was a party, that's right, and then she ended up dead a few days later. Tell me if I'm getting this right. Something about it seems to just click right for me, I don't know why."

God. Damnit. All he had to do was be able to move his hand casually without getting shot. That meant he had to let his stance get relaxed without provoking anything.  
He could always take back what he said, so long as he didn't get shot.

"Look, look! Okay. I didn't do what you think I did."  
"Oh, soooo," she started, dragging the barrel of the gun around his back lightly now, "That girl, Kate Marsh, right? You had nothing to do with that?"

Nathan took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. He prayed to god that this would work. "Look I did . . . I did dose her, all right? Just some GHB, she was going to be all right."  
"I knew it." She actually sounded stunned, but he went on.  
"I got the drugs from Mark Jefferson - he's a teacher here, he teaches photography. He told me to do it, all right? He offered to get me out of some nasty shit, no cops, nothing to my dad if I gave Kate the drugs and drove her to a gas station on the edge of town. He didn't do shit for me, and now I'm fucked beyond imagining, okay?"

She took an unsteady breath in. "You mean . . . a teacher? Got you to do this in exchange for something?" She seemed to mull it over for a second while Nathan stayed silent. "Bullshit. You're a creep - I _saw_ you with your camera, you can't-"

Someone appeared at the top of the ramp, and as soon as they did, Chloe shut up. That didn't stop her from being noticed, though.  
Max's eyes went wide as she realized what she was seeing, more tipped off by Nathan's hands than anything else. "Chloe? Chloe, what are you doing?"  
She gave out a quiet 'fuck' and then a, "Max, hey, Max, maybe you should-"  
Max was quick to interrupt her though, taking another step forward, "What the fuck are you doing with that gun? Chloe, stop, plea-"  
Nathan thought he could hear Chloe's head shake before he felt the gun disappear from his back, and he saw her waving it. "No, Max, it's still empty, don't-"

Nathan's hand snatched outwards, and he felt Chloe's gun snap to his back as time rewound. She hovered there, saying nonsense as time was pulled backwards and Max disappeared back around the corner of the ramp. After a few more seconds, Chloe was pulled back away from Nathan entirely; he craned his head to see where she had come from, and discovered her smoking behind a tree, invisible from the steps he'd come from.

That was enough. Nathan released his grasp on time and immediately started his way towards the ramp.  
"Holy fucksticks - how did you . . ."

Nathan didn't listen - he managed to make it to the ramp and snapped time backwards about twenty seconds, making sure he would never be seen.

He didn't even need to rewind his way past the principal, drunk off his ass and fumbling with his keys in front of the boys' dorm. Nathan just walked past him, knowing he'd leave in the opposite direction soon enough.

As Nathan hid behind the corner of the boys' dorm, though, he noticed something - the lone picture of Kate had grown into a small memorial of a half-dozen small items, some of hers snatched from her room in the night, some gifts people had left for her.  
There was no girl sitting on the steps now - no angry girl, at least. Just Kate's gentle smile.

Nathan found himself pulled over to the girl's dorm, hoping the principal would clear out by the time that Max showed up. He crouched down in front of the little memorial, looking at all of the items in turn. He couldn't keep eye contact with her photo for long, and his eyes quickly dropped to the items that couldn't look back at him.  
His hand dropped, trying to get a better look at the darkness. He grasped a rosary, running a hand over the beads, his thumb running over the cross.

 _"_ _I don't believe in justice, Max."_

He stood up like a snap, her voice behind him. He kept the rosary clutched in his hand like it might protect him.  
She wasn't there.  
His heart was in his throat, blood surging through him. _It's not real_ , he told himself, _she's not here_.

Nathan turned back around to put the rosary back down, and found himself face to face with her. Kate stood on the first step, hands down by her side, her face and hair soaked in the rain.  
 _"I don't believe in anything anymore."_

He screamed. He heard a door open behind him as he ran back to his dorm, but he didn't look back. He didn't even care when he reached the principal - the man was easy enough to shove out of the way, for Nathan to force his way back into his dorm.

Nathan sat on his bed in the dark. He kept the rosary in his hand the whole time, rewinding time until he bled.


	9. The Revelation

Nathan hadn't really thought about how shitty it was of him to bail on Victoria last night. As far as he calculated it, Victoria could only end up in such a bad situation with Jefferson in comparison to him. Oh, snooping around class, maybe trying to alter your grades or something? Suspension, probably. Nathan had that to start with. Victoria had not seen it quite the same way.

 **Victoria:** Where were you when I got caught?  
Your car is gone  
 **Victoria:** Did you seriously ditch me to go hit up your dealer at MIDNIGHT? **Victoria:** Where the fuck are you? **Victoria:** I wish you were here **Victoria:** I know you're online  
Just talk to me, please? **Nathan:** ya sorry i fell asleep  
 **Nathan:** somebodys working on my car rn **Victoria:** What are you going to do today? **Nathan:** just dick around i guess  
 **Nathan:** get ready for end of the World party **Victoria:** ok **Victoria:** Sticking around school, though? **Nathan:** sure as shit not going home **Victoria:** ok

Nathan left his dorm just after 10:00, when most of his classmates had their first period. He was unfamiliar with the school's bus system, so he just brought a stack of ones and fives with him, oddly pleased that his Blackwell ID did just as well to get him on a bus away from campus. Despite how rapidly he went through his dad's money, the bills he racked of from dealing maintained a sort of pride for him. Even if dealing from his untouchable status was unfair, the assumption of risk on his part left the money feeling a lot more real.

He just kept his eyes out the window the entire bus ride, which was a lot easier with his ear buds in. He could see nobody, and so nobody could see him. No one except the posters of Rachel plastered all over the town, every crosswalk a cross examination.

He jumped in his seat when he noticed the first one. A bird plummeted from the sky and landed on the sidewalk. Well, maybe 'landed' wasn't the right word. It all but exploded, and the couple walking hand-in-hand down that sidewalk jumped themselves, yelping something that Nathan couldn't hear. That's when he began to notice the other ones - bird corpses littered the streets and alleyways, broke on the hoods of cars. Everywhere he looked, birds were dead or dying, as though some brutal plague had just struck them, and the world around them was oblivious to their generic virus thriller.  
Nathan felt bathed in death.

The situation was no better at the diner. The parking lot was filled with them. Nathan wondered how many.

One of them on the right side of the diner was trapped in a vortex of ants. He was not sure what else he could possibly call it - they swarmed in a never-ending rotation, making little effort to dissect their food, instead following each other around its body over and over. He noticed that there was no clear trail of them from the diner or anywhere else. They just danced and danced around the corpse, slowly drawing themselves in. They would be consumed by that vortex. He wondered if they knew that. He wondered if they could fear what would happen to them, that their nature would obliterate them.

 _Ants are dumb_ , he thought.  
And then, _Just like people._

It was that thought that provoked him to pull out his camera and crouch down next to them. He took a quick shot, but quickly discovered that the angle was wrong. He dropped to his knees and held his camera with one hand, leaning over them and the bird, taking another shot. No, no, it looked weird with his shadow in it. He crawled around so that he would not be included, and took another picture.

 _That's the one_ , he concluded, returning to his knees while he checked the preview screen. He was a little sad that the bird was not more decayed, but he knew this would be cleaned up before it got to a good state.  
It was weird how little blood you saw with some deaths. Television makes you feel like there always has to be blood, unless the person is old. Sometimes, though, it's just the limpness, or the way insects crawl all over you.

"Maybe you could try harder to not be such a fucking creep."

As he heard the sandpaper voice, Nathan flinched, nearly dropping his camera and crushing the ants. He looked up and discovered Frank on the other side of the ants. Instead of replying, he just stuffed away his camera in his backpack and stood up.

"Got a party tomorrow. I need to stock up - I got the feeling a lot of people will be using at this one."

Frank looked Nathan up and down for a second. His stare was rigid and cold, which was hardly something new, but they had long gotten past the stage where Frank was _evaluating_ Nathan.  
Nathan just kept his eyes flat on Frank, letting him see nothing.

"I thought that's why you were around so much Monday," Frank replied. Finally his eyes went even to Nathan's. "Because of the party."  
Nathan stuck his hands in his jackets. "Yeah, well, the party's been expanded, and I wouldn't feel right leaving anyone out, right? It's a fucking party."

Frank blinked slowly, crossing his arms over his chest. "Yeah, all right, come on."

Purchases from Frank for the Vortex Club were technically, as Nathan saw it, a service on behalf of the club, so he had no issue dumping hundreds of dollars into it without a second glance. Everyone expected ecstasy and weed, the skater kids were into acid (Vic and her friends had lost interest after discovering Taylor has nothing but bad trips), and there's always _someone_ interested in coke. Admittedly, that someone was often Nathan himself, but occasionally someone was curious and got to fucking lose it for a while at the party. There had been no one at the last party. Nathan had wished there was - maybe Victoria would have gotten more pleasure out of taping them than Kate.

A wave of nausea hit Nathan as he entered the Two Whales. _Fucking_. Kate.  
God, no, he just needed to eat. He'd only had pizza for about the past 60 hours, he just needed to eat something.

There was a vacuum when Nathan was inside. Nobody's eyes were on him. In fact, every single person adamantly refused to look at him.  
That worked for him.

As he sat down at a booth, he pulled out his phone, doing nothing for the few seconds it took for someone to come to his table. The man waiting on him refused to look, too, busy staring at his page of notes.  
Frank entered, and Officer Berry kept his eyes on him every second until he took the booth in the corner.

"What'll you have to drink." It was too flat to sound like a question.  
"Orange soda."  
"Is that it?"  
"Yeah."  
"I'll be right back."  
"Cool."

And he was off, shooting down to go see Frank at the other end of the diner. There were so few diners in town, and this was definitely the busiest one - Nathan wondered why they just didn't double-up on waiters on the floor.

Facebook was an absolute fucking mess right now. A storm of messages was tearing into Taylor, into Victoria, even into Max. This, he had pretty much expected. Victoria had posted the video of Kate. Taylor would not stop commentating throughout the whole thing. And now there were more than videos - there were photographs and news articles about Max, about how her hand lashed out far too late to save Kate. Some people were saying she had goaded Kate into it, but these people kept themselves anonymous. They could not accept failure here.  
Nathan was one of them.

There was one message that Nathan noticed, though. It wasn't on Taylor or Victoria or Max or anyone's page that he could see, but it showed up on his wall from Trevor. There were dozens of notes stating that it had been shared, although it was only liked twice. The original message stated:

 **Brooke Scott**  
Avenge Kate Marsh

 _The fuck's that mean?_

The waiter returned and dropped off Nathan's soda without a word. Nathan barely noticed, instead clicking on Brooke's profile.  
Right, Brooke. The girl who was really into robotics from engineering. She was a cold bitch when she was with anyone but Graham, and even then, she seemed, at best, neutral. She didn't hang out with anyone on campus, as far as Nathan could recall, instead focusing on her iPad. She was the one who was always fucking around with that drone on campus.

Nathan replayed the past two days. He had never used his rewind while that stupid drone was around, had he? He'd seen her inside the girls' dorm on Tuesday when he got into Max's room. He hadn't shifted at all when he got into that fight with Graham. The only other time had been in the quad on Mon-

 _Fuck._

The drone had been flying around the quad Monday, when he'd rewound to avoid being seen by Max. Which, at worst, meant that Brooke (1) was friends with Graham, who (2) knew Nathan had brought a gun to campus and was friends with (3) Max, who was close with Kate Marsh and knew (4) Chloe, who had connected the dots between Nathan and Kate. It was a long trail to be sure, but if Brooke had evidence of Nathan's powers, she might not be the only one to know for long. It was bad enough that people might connect him to Kate. But if they connected the dots and were making goddamn Facebook posts about vengeance . . .

Nathan checked the share count. 39. 39 people who might know.

He began to regret not shooting Chloe. But at least Kate was dead.

He felt like retching by the time that the waiter returned to take his order.  
"What will-"  
"Nah, nothing, this is good enough, thanks."

Nathan grabbed his soda and snapped it open. His waiter nodded and continued on. Nathan took a drink and immediately regretted it, his stomach squeezing so tightly he felt like it might start pushing acid back up his throat. He set the drink back down and got up to go to the bathroom.

The very first thing he saw inside made him stop. Fresh graffiti on the stalls read:

 **YOU KILLED KATE**

The lettering was so sharp that it looked like it had been cut into the stalls. It screamed at him, overwhelming him, cut him, knives in his stomach.

It only took him a few steps to get into the left stall, and drop down to vomit his guts out. Not that there was much to come up - just the bile that ate into his throat like the soda was on fire this time. When so little came, he just spit in an attempt to clear the taste from his mouth before rinsing it in the sink.

Nathan had sat down for only a few seconds when he heard the door of the Two Whales swing open, but he didn't bother to look, resigned to just wait for the next bus with the drink he couldn't down. All he caught was a reflection in the window ahead of him, of a short girl in plaid approaching from behind him. It wasn't until he saw it come into focus - the ripped jeans, the long hair, the feather earring - that he realized who he was.

He turned, momentarily pleasantly surprised: "Rachel?"  
And then, he paused, finding instead Max Caulfield dressed up in her clothes.  
Maybe Victoria was right. Maybe all of this shit from Max really was a vendetta against Nathan. Maybe she just really did hate him _that_ much.

"Whatevathefuck," he dismissed her, instead turning back to his drink, as if he had been enjoying it so much.  
What _was_ she doing in those clothes, though? They were so like Rachel, and so unlike Max, that the similarity couldn't be a coincidence.

He did his best to pretend he didn't really care. She wasn't that perceptive, she wouldn't have noticed the look on his face when he thought it was Rachel. "Oh look, 'Max Amber.' Nice outfit."  
She just blinked at him - it clearly wasn't enough.  
"By the way," his chagrin began to well up, "thanks for getting me expelled, you twee bitch."

For once, she actually looked a little pissed off - her eyebrows raised at the insult before her face pinched into a glare. Same face from when he threatened her in the parking lot. Resistance.  
When you hit resistance, _push harder_.

Nathan focused his eyes ahead, trying to condense his frustration into the sharp point he'd had when this all started. Back in the bathroom with Chloe. He needed that intensity. Chloe had been afraid.  
"You're lucky this is a public place," he said, finally turning his head to look her right in the eye. She always met him like this. She would fear him otherwise.  
He didn't see fear.  
He faced forward again. The eye contact was harder for him than it was for her.

He could not believe the condescension in her voice when she spoke. "Considering we're in a public diner with a police officer right over there," she didn't even pause to point him out, "you shouldn't advertise your rage. . ."  
His hand curled on the table. He leg was shaking, and he knew it, but there was nothing he could do about it. She was so dumb. Why did _he_ feel dumb?  
She finally finished the statement with a hint of a threat, ". . . Prescott."  
She wasn't scared at all.

"Oh yeah? You shouldn't have bitch-snitched on me to that fucked-up principal."  
His voice was getting high. It got like this when he was angry - it would raise to a shrill squeak, like he was a huffy 13-year-old.

Max unfolded her arms, and although her voice lowered, her tone was almost taunting. "I bet you hoped that Kate Marsh would stay quiet. . ." she trailed off, letting the threat hang in the air.  
He ripped it down petulantly, "Idiot says what?"  
"Did you drug her?" she asked, still not looking away, just swiping her hair behind her ear.

Too close. Too close. She thought that she was corralling him with these questions, pushing him into a corner, that he would collapse into nothing. She was so stupid. Each and every one of them was so stupid. She is going to die. _You are going to die._

"You are so stupid, Max." Nathan felt like his whole body was shaking. He couldn't meet her eyes, but he couldn't look away from her either - the patchwork of her and Rachel, so similar but not quite the same. Her little hair ties where Rachel had worn her bracelets. Sleeves rolled down, not up to the elbow. New-looking Converse, not the beat-to-hell pairs Rachel had probably had since freshmen year.  
"You think you're so goddamn smart, too. Don't push me, girl." Finally, he could look up at her. "You don't want me for an enemy, understand?" He learned from his seat towards her, "Do you?"*

Her voice lowered almost to a whisper, and she stooped towards him, unblinking. "Did you rape her?"  
He didn't know why, but it was like an icy knife was stuck between his ribs. It pulled the air from his lungs. She was finally wrong, just wrong, stupid, _stupid_ , but shame overwhelmed him in a wave.  
"You are... fucking _evil_ Max." His voice was high, the shame curdling into rage. "No _way_ are you asking me this."  
But she didn't back off, just stood there, as if waiting for his confession.

He slid from the booth and rose up beside her. He could see the officer and the waitress shoot a glance at them, but nobody moved yet. Max didn't even take a step back.  
Finally, his voice got soft like hers, and menace replaced his childishness. "I didn't touch her, and I wouldn't. You just crossed my red line you little-" he reached into his jacket, where he had been keeping his gun. It wasn't there now, but from the sudden intake in her breath, she believed it was.

"Is there a problem here?" Officer Berry strolled down between the booths and the bar, and Max took a step back, letting her breath out.

But Nathan was past his limit right now, and he wasn't going to deal with another fucking dog if he didn't. "Just fuck off, Berry, all right!?" Nathan yelled so loudly that much of the restaurant just . . . stopped, turning to look at him instead. They all looked pretty frightened, but Berry himself seemed, at worst, bemused.  
"Now, Nathan, why don't we just-" he reached out for Nathan's arm, but Nathan just backed up into his booth instead.  
"Don't you fucking touch me you-" he stopped short, not knowing what insult to hurl that could sting.

He had none. He rewound instead.

*Again, her voice lowered, but not out of fear. Rather, like she was trying to keep him from making a scene. His father would do the same thing. "Dude, calm down. We're in the diner."

He was shaking. He did. He needed to calm down, or rewinding was just going to stick him in a loop until he blew up, over and over, until he ripped this whole diner apart with his bare hands, or he pulled it into a black hole. He had to stop.

"Right . . ." he looked up at Max, wondering where this comment had come from - where they were in their conversation. "Plus, you're an adult now. I can sue your dumb ass for libel. Thanks." He grabbed his soda to indicate that the conversation was over. "Now, fuck off, dyke!"

And she . . . did. The question did not come again. He did not have to play it off cool or sit like a rock. She just turned and walked right out of the diner, glancing down at something in her hands as she pushed the door open. From what he could see through the window, it looked like . . . a set of keys? But she didn't have a car - from what he could guess by looking out at the parking lot, she had come with Chloe in that shitwagon truck.

A moment later, Chloe reappeared in his vision from somewhere in the parking lot, holding a rather massive thigh bone in hand. What the fuck was that from? A deer? Where the fuck had she gotten it?

Nathan grabbed his camera, forgetting his soda completely to this sudden weirdness. Max flashed the keys as she arrived, then turned the corner, becoming hidden behind Frank's RV. Were those _Frank's_ keys?

He got up out of his booth and made his way for the door. He had no thought of paying, and nobody made any effort to stop him. He stopped himself right at the window of the door, as Max suddenly hurled the bone into the street, and a second later, Frank's dog charged around the corner after it. He must not have seen the trucker pulling out of the beach-side parking lot, though, because a second later, the front bumper practically crushed him into the asphalt.

Max and Chloe disappeared around the corner of the RV again, but Nathan's vision no longer had room for them, only the fascinated horror as the trucker pulled too an immediate stop, apparently having not seen the dog, but hearing something that Nathan could not hear.

Nathan finally pushed his way out the door, making a beeline for the accident.

"Shiiit," said the trucker. After a few seconds, he noticed Nathan's approach. He turned towards Nathan, "Awh, hey man, is this your - dog?"  
Nathan pushed past him to stand right in front of Frank's dog, hovering over him for a second without answering the question.

The dog was still alive. It whimpered quietly as Nathan approached, but it couldn't seem to get more than its head up off the ground. There was blood coating the fur around its mouth, but there were no compound fractures leaking the stuff out onto the ground.  
This dog hated Nathan. He would yap so much whenever Nathan got near that Frank dealt with him exclusively outside of the RV, locking it up inside if Nathan hung around too long. But now, all it could do was whimper, in pain and absolutely powerless to do anything about it.

Nathan's fingers were numb on the sides of his camera. His agitated shaking had stopped. Everything in his mind and in his body felt quiet, still as his eyes tried to frame the scene he saw. He stepped around until he felt the angle was right, and peered through his viewfinder.

"Hey man, you don't gotta do-"

 _Click._

"- that; shit, what do you want?"

For a few seconds, everything was silence*, and Nathan exhaled softly as he previewed the shot. It was so nearly perfect. There was just something about it that made him feel still. Like he could breathe.

"What the FUCK did you DO!?"

Nathan looked over his shoulder and found Frank practically charging towards the truck. His eyes, his stance spoke of violence, and Nathan barely noticed that he was running before time was slipping back, Nathan hiding on the other side of the truck*.

"What the FUCK did you DO!?"

Nathan slinked to the back side of the truck, not sure how to get out of this situation just yet, and not wanting to look up from his camera. This was a moment, a special moment, and he needed to understand what it meant. He heard the sound of Frank's fist in the man's face, of the man falling to the ground. He could see the cars lining up behind the truck, staring in confusion at Nathan as he hid back there, staring at his camera's preview screen. He just didn't care.

Nathan flipped through the previews again - he had done it enough times by now to know where he'd find Chloe. The picture of her curled up on her side, eyes gazing blank. Back to the dog with blood on its muzzle. How could they look so similar when the scenes were so different? Nothing hurt Chloe, and she was a girl. A truck smashed right into the dog, and he was a dog.

And then, it clicked. Nathan sagged against the back of the truck, overwhelmed as he finally felt he understood, though the thoughts only bordered on coherence.

* * *

Nathan had probably overdone it with the coke this time. Scratch that, he'd gone over the line, and he knew it, but he didn't know how else he was going to get all the thoughts in his head out of his head. He was here, just beyond the line of understanding, he was finally here, and he couldn't afford to take a step back.

Nathan arrived back on the Blackwell campus just as lunch ended, scouring the parking lot for Jefferson. No luck, and if the small rush of students arriving back in the parking lot was any indication, he'd probably find him in his classroom. He only had a few minutes to talk to him, he'd have to get there quick.

Victoria and Taylor were still sitting on the fountain as people walked past, but they both stood as Nathan all but ran past them. He stopped, casting a glance into the hallway to see if he could see Jefferson. Nothing.

"Hey, Nate, do you have a sec? I need to talk to you about the p-; hey, are you all right?"

"Party?" he finished for her while she spoke, then focusing more at her question. "Yeah, fine, why?"

She pointed at his face, and then gestured just above her lip. "Your nose. You're bleeding."

Taylor's face pinched in concern while Nathan and Victoria talked, but she didn't say anything.  
Nathan raised a hand to his face and wiped under his nose, adding a smear of blood to his hand. "Shit," he muttered, and then, "Fuck, yeah, that's been happening."

He glanced at the hallway again and noticed Jefferson leaving the principal's office.

"Well are you sure you're okay?" Victoria took a step towards him, but Nathan recoiled in the same instant.  
He raised his hands as if in surrender, "Yeah, no, I'm fine, I just gotta - I gotta go. Right now. Bye."

Taylor glanced at Nathan's bloody hand and grimaced, but Victoria actually reached out as he suddenly turned and left.  
He thought he heard a quiet "Fuck" from behind him as he reached the steps.

"Jefferson," Nathan called as soon as he was in the building. The man didn't hear him, though, and rounded the corner of the hallway to his room.  
Nathan pursued, calling out "Yo, Jefferson!" as soon as he made it to the corner. Nothing.

"Shit. Fuck. JEFFERSON!" Nathan shouted, and the hallway of students turned to stare, if not stop completely in their tracks.  
Luckily, they were not the only ones, as Jefferson finally paused, took a look behind him, and made an about-face.

Everyone looked from Nathan to him, and he gave a small, reassuring smile in response.  
Nathan began to make his way down the hall, and Jefferson followed suit towards him a second later.

"Fucking - thank you, goddamn. You're deaf, man." Nathan knew he was talking loudly, but he felt like nobody could hear him. Everything was just loud in his head, and everything outside must be muffled.

"Nathan," Jefferson greeted politely as they met. "Good to see you coming to class so late in the day. Do you need something?"

"What, me?" Nathan inquired, totally confused. He gestured to himself with both hands. "Oh, no, no way man, because I get it." He tapped his temple repeatedly, "I get it. What you've been trying to teach me. I get it. I'm good. I'm ready."

Now most people were clearly trying to pretend they weren't paying attention. There were two exceptions to this, however - Brooke was sitting on the floor, a sketchbook in her hands, and leaning over the side of a row of lockers, eyes locked straight on Nathan. The other, just outside of Jefferson's classroom, was Max, just staring, one hand on the strap of her messenger bag.

"Well, it's good that you're keeping up on your schoolwork Nathan, but I have a class to teach right now and-" Jefferson began to turn away, but Nathan reached out and grabbed his shoulder.

"No, I'm serious. I found this dog and it just, it clicked. It has nothing to do with girls. It's not the hair or the eyes or anything, it's just honesty, it's vulnerability -" Nathan had been working on the perfect words to describe what he saw, and he was so glad that they were coming to him so easily - "It's . . . the walls. They're gone. It's beautiful. I get it."

Something appeared in Jefferson's eyes. They were eyes lit up like fire, the kind that is usually accompanied by a snarl or a roar. They were eyes like Frank's when he came for the trucker who hit his dog. But there was no snarl on Jefferson's lips, only the same small smile.  
He shook his head. "No, Nathan, I'm afraid you still don't get it. But we will talk about this. Later. Now, I have to go teach class; I hope you'll stick around for yours."

And that was it. He turned and walked back down the hall, followed a few seconds later by Max, though she shot Nathan one final glance.

Nathan stood there in the hallway, unable to speak. Different emotions kept welling up, cresting into waves that ate up the one before it. Embarrassment. Rage. Shame. Complete confusion. Sadness.

He didn't notice Graham in the door of the chem lab until he started to speak.  
Graham pointed down the hall where Jefferson disappeared. "I, ah, I think that was teacher speak for 'go fuck yourself you moron', but, I mean, I could be totally wrong there." He paused as Nathan turned his body towards him. He seemed to be pondering something deeply. "I mean, like 5% chance he wasn't."

"Why don't you-" Nathan began to step towards him, but immediately Nathan found Madsen in between them, his arms crossed as he faced Nathan.

"Now, Mr. Prescott, why don't you get to class? Or maybe take a drive?"

Although Nathan froze in place at the interruption, he felt like fire was building up in his chest. All he needed to do was step past Madsen and breathe it out, melt Graham where he stood, scream, scream, scream.

He was suspended. He was one infraction away from expulsion. If he started to hit Graham right now he might not stop until there was nothing but a stain on the linoleum.

Nathan breathed out, icy cold, closing his eyes. Counting down from ten.

"Yeah. I'll do that."

He turned and marched right out of the building, out of the school, into his truck. He drove out of the parking lot, he drove until he was on the edge of town, and he pulled the truck into a new lot. The beach, at the head of the trail leading up to Arcadia Bay's light house.


	10. The Lighthouse

When Nathan finally parked his truck at the base of the path up the light house, he just sat in the driver's seat with the engine off for a long moment. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly while he tried to talk himself into getting out of the car. The stillness of it, of finally letting himself sit still, left him boiling, expanding inside the car until he thought he must burst the windows.

It burst from his mouth instead, "Fuck you!" He pulled on the steering wheel so hard that he hoped to pull it off, imagined that he could for a second. "Fuck you! Fuck you, you piece of shit." He wasn't strong enough to kill the steering wheel through dismemberment, so he pounded it with his fist, although the pain it sent through his knuckles and palm was far more than he had accounted for.

His yelling and swearing and hitting left him breathless and in pain quickly, and he was left leaning his head up against the steering wheel to recover. He felt dumb as soon as it was over, even though the rage was there. He wasn't even sure who he was talking to.  
Nathan thought he was done having fits. Ever since his English class witnessed him try to take out the teacher with a desk, he had been trying to keep them under control, to crush the rage until it was a fine powder. He could use it as a weapon, like his father did, like Jefferson did. He just kept fucking up.

He saw a shadow appear on his dashboard, and, after a second of hesitation, looked up. Perched there on his windshield was the blue butterfly.  
Had he known it would be here? How could he have known? Just because it had been here in his dream?

It was waiting for him.

Nathan stepped out of his car, and the butterfly immediately took flight. He knew the path, and just walked briskly after it, hands in his jacket pockets.  
He was glad not to feel rain pooled there in his pockets, though the sun was a little too hot for his jacket.

The butterfly guided Nathan along, all the way up the path. The lighthouse greeted Nathan as it always did, looming like nothing else in Arcadia Bay was quite big enough to do. He could never quite keep his eyes on it, no matter how much it demanded his attention.  
The light house had never suited Nathan very much. It was, in his mind, very much the territory of the skater punks that Trevor rolled with, too cool to get dragged down by the academics and losers but too dirty and wild for the likes of the Vortex Club. The fire pit of their constant outings sat here with graffiti on the rocks they used for seats.

Nathan realized he couldn't find the butterfly anywhere. He looked to the side of the light house, wondering if he would see a paper clipping wrapped around the fence, but there was nothing and no one.

He sat on one of the rocks surrounding the fire pit and peeled off his jacket. He hated taking it off in front of people, but he couldn't pretend it wasn't a pain under an October sun that refused to acknowledge that it was time to start getting cold. He flipped it over in his hands and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and his lighter before dropping it on one of the nearby rocks.

He remembered the night Rachel brought him out here. It had been pretty early last year, he supposed, back when he was still in Jefferson's photography class. Sometime before January, then. Justin had gotten his hands on mescaline and wanted everyone to try it out, though Rachel and Nathan both passed it up for the opportunity to watch everyone trip. Nathan had never touched the shit, never had much liking for hallucinogens, but Rachel . . . she'd had a bad trip on the stuff. Right, that was it, right?  
Rachel had tried everything, as far as Nathan knew. Half of it she'd tried in front of him. Mescaline was the only thing she had claimed not to like. And, honestly, that had been plenty to convince Nathan.

Nathan stuck a cigarette in his mouth, tossing the pack on his jacket, though it promptly slipped off into the dirt. He huffed in disappointment, but did nothing about it. Instead, he just flicked open the lighter and ignited the flame. He liked the sound of the paper burning just a second after you put it in the fire, as if it hesitated to shrivel away.

"Over here."

Nathan flinched, shutting off the flame. He knew his mind must be playing tricks on him again, like earlier in the diner, but he couldn't help but look.

And this time, he saw her. She was stepping backwards towards the bench near the edge of the peninsula, a broad smile over her lips. Her hair didn't shimmer despite the bright afternoon light, but looked dark and dull, as if covered by an invisible shadow. She wore a heavy sweater like she so often would when it got cold, so unused to the Oregon autumn.

"Well, that's because you've never seen it at sunset, have you? The golden hour is at its goldest right here over the bay."

She turned now towards the ocean, and her hair blew against some strong wind that Nathan couldn't feel.

Nathan withdrew the cigarette from his mouth deliberately, as if he was scared of letting her hear him. At least, until he called, "Rachel?"

She didn't seem to hear, but instead made a nudge with her elbow against the air to her side. "Because gold is our color, you dweeb. We can use the same scenery, same camera, and it'll be hella gorgeous both times."

The way she put her hands on her hips let him know she was rolling her eyes, even from behind. "Save the flattery for when you're behind the camera, Nate."

It was dark, early December, and the boys were still chattering somewhere behind them on the rocks. Nathan felt fine, though his face was a little numb from the cold and his body a little tingly from the beers. He kept his fingers stuffed in his pockets, just outside of Rachel's elbow range, and he kept trying to peel the smile off his face, but Rachel kept slapping it back in place with her banter.

"Pssh," He dismissed with a wave of his hand. "I've got enough to last us then and now. I'm a flatterer."

She snorted, flipping her hair a little to try and get it all to blow about as one concentrated clump. The wind blew it all towards his face, but it was a little too harsh to get any scent from - he was just glad it wasn't ending up in his mouth at this distance. It reminded him a lot of Victoria's hair before she cut it so short, constantly a personal attack on him if he let it get too close.

She pinched up her face into one of exaggerated annoyance, lowering her voice as she said, "Gah, whatthefuck? You poor or just dress like shit?"

Although she broke out laughing, he stooped his head down a little. "I don't sound like that. That's Vic's schtick. I . . . hang out with poor people." He gestured back at the boys that he most definitely did not usually hang with.

She almost doubled over at that, though he couldn't tell if she was faking it as she clutched her stomach. "Oh my god. 'I . . . hang out with poor people'" she said again in her too-angry imitation.

He sulked.

Apparently having to explain the joke, she raised up her hands as if to stop something (very slowly) oncoming. "Okay, so, I don't know if you know this, but we go to a _private_ school. Trevor's house could fit like, three of my houses in it. Greg only has a job to buy like literally every game on Steam. I had to get in on scholarship and I'm not poor, regardless of what Victoria says."

He knew that, but still felt like his conclusion was valid. "But they're dirty like, all the time."

She shrugged, gesturing back at them in the space between her and Nathan. "Well, that's just because they're hippies and they're outside all the time."

Nathan was pretty sure he preferred Hayden's version of hippie. The fact that almost none of them owned a car, their pants were constantly ripped, and they smelled like arm pits unless they smelled like weed put them pretty close to untouchable status, as far as Nathan was concerned. Why couldn't they just smoke a lot and fuck around as much as possible? At least those hippies were reliable for something.  
Nathan wondered what Rachel possibly got out of her relationship with these guys. Sure, skating might be fun, but it couldn't be fun enough to justify these four, right?

She finally turned so that she was looking at Nathan instead of the ocean, and he turned to face her as well.  
She quirked up her eyebrows. "So? When do you wanna take the shot?"

They hovered there for a few seconds, though Nathan wasn't thinking about the answer at all. He could take pictures of Rachel whenever she wanted. She was shimmering gold in the sun and dark and warm at night. Even though it was cold, and dark, and windy, he knew how warm she would be. The wind left his skin and lips chapped, but her lips were still glossed in shiny pink. She was warm, but he couldn't quite bring himself to kiss her in that moment, the side of her face just flickering with the shadow of the flame. He couldn't take that shot, not even with the beers that tried to fool him into thinking he was warm, too.

With the crack of thunder, Nathan found himself standing there alone. The rain poured down, turning the dark sky into a wet gray-blue of the early morning. Though the rain should have been deafening, Nathan could hear nothing. In its place was this void, a gaping hole in sound where only a slow, heavy inhale existed.  
Every flickering light of the distant storm brought it into a second of focus - the massive typhoon off the shore of Arcadia Bay.

Nathan didn't even turn when he heard her voice, though it was filled with some blend of terror and rage. That was the only way he knew it.

"Fuck all of that, okay? You were given a power. You didn't ask for it . . . and you saved me - which had to happen! All of this did . . . except for what happened to Rachel."

She knew? She knew.

There was some distortion in the voice before he could understand it clearly again. Except? That wasn't her voice anymore. No, although it was raspy and angry, it was someone else's.

"No! No way! You are my number one priority now. You are all that matters to me."

The distortion left Nathan feeling like he was missing something, and as it hummed through his mind again, he felt like the scene before him, the storm, ticked forward suddenly.

" . . . not like my mom. Look what she had to give up and live though. And she did. She deserves so much more than to be killed by a storm in a fucking diner!"

When it happened again, Nathan could feel the warmth of his fresh nose bleed. He reached up and dabbed it away from his lip, letting the rain clear it from his fingers.

"I won't trade you!"

"You're not trading me. Maybe you've just been delaying my real destiny. Look at how many times I've almost died or actually died around you . . . look at what's happened in Arcadia Bay ever since you first saved me."

The edges of Nathan's vision were darkening in little pulses, and the voices behind him dulled every time it pulsed. He barely realized that he was about to faint before his knees gave out from under him, and he slapped against the mud with a loud slap.

It was the heavy slap against Nathan's windshield that startled him upright. He didn't recognize the hand or the thick bracelet on it at first, but as he shook himself into consciousness and looked out the driver side window, he recognized that he should roll down his window.

After the window dropped almost all of the way, Frank asked wearily, "What are you doing here, Nathan?"

Nathan exhaled slowly, quickly aware that he didn't have a great answer for that, and Frank really didn't like him driving out here and sticking around. Frank and Nathan were both far too recognizable for the local police, and it was best that they were seen together as little as possible, especially when Nathan was supposed to be distributing for a party. _Especially_ when everything Nathan was supposed to sell was still in his truck.

Nathan gestured out towards the ocean. "It's the beach, dude, and I'm suspended. There's not exactly a lot to do in this deadass town."

Frank huffed, but he seemed to buy it. "You're telling me."

It was only then that Nathan realized Frank was holding a leash, and the leash bobbed around slightly as whatever was on the other end paced about. Nathan was glad he had decided not to get out of his car - that goddamn dog would never stop barking if Nathan got too close.

There was an awkward pause where they both realized they had no business to conduct, having run into each other in such unrelated circumstances. Even if Frank's dog was a guard dog that may or may not have ripped a few people's throats out, it still needed to walk and pee, Nathan reasoned.

"Uhh," Frank started, scratching the side of his jaw. "You all set for that party?"

Nathan nodded. They both knew he was loaded up and then some, but it was a much easier topic than why he was sleeping in his car at the beach.  
"Yeah, all set. Should be a rager."

"Good, good," Frank said, his growl gone for a few seconds somewhere in the awkwardness. Then, he cleared his throat, replacing it with an especially sandpaper sound, "Let me know if we're going to have any new regulars. We don't need two steps for everyone."

Frank slapped the hood of the truck, then backed away with his dog a little, apparently planning to skirt by Nathan towards the light house trail.

"Yeah, I, ah . . . got to go plan for that party anyway. See ya."

"See ya."

Nathan turned the car on, waited for Frank and his dog to pass him by, and pulled out of the parking lot.

For the briefest second, Nathan thought he could see another person walking on the other side of the dog from Frank, but when he turned to look, no one was there.


End file.
